Alumna Nyeema Watson

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Alumna Nyeema Watson is the new assistant chancellor for civic engagement at Rutgers University–Camden.

Photography: 
Robert Laramie

A touchstone of Rutgers University–Camden is its commitment to, and success in, helping its host city. In recognition of the university’s efforts, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching chose Rutgers–Camden, among 240 institutions, to receive its 2015 Community Engagement Classification, a highly selective designation that acknowledges the contributions of faculty, staff, students, and alumni in working with the Camden community and Rutgers–Camden’s innovative approach in using civic learning in its curriculum. (Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Rutgers University–Newark received the designation in 2010.)

The personification of Rutgers–Camden’s outreach is Nyeema Watson, who was  recently appointed assistant chancellor for civic engagement. As the director of public school partnerships in the Office of Civic Engagement, Watson CCAS’00, GSC’15 had played a big role in forging relationships between the university and Camden schools and in promoting student graduation from high school and college, most visibly in the success of the Rutgers Future Scholars program and the North Camden Schools Partnership. Watson also worked at the university’s Center for Children and Childhood Studies and served as a program development specialist for the New Jersey Department of Education.