President Robert Barchi and his wife, Dr. Francis Barchi, invited 160 graduates to the presidential residence in Piscataway to honor them as the first inductees into the Matthew Leydt Society. One of them was Julia Xia (pictured with the Barchis in the in

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President Robert Barchi and his wife, Dr. Francis Barchi, invited 160 graduates to the presidential residence in Piscataway to honor them as the first inductees into the Matthew Leydt Society. One of them was Julia Xia (pictured with the Barchis in the inset), a cell biology and neuroscience honors student at the School of Arts and Sciences, who will be in Indonesia as a Fulbright teaching assistant for the next year before enrolling at Emory University School of Medicine.

Photography: 
Nick Romanenko

Just hours before the 2015 commencement at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, President Robert Barchi and his wife, Dr. Francis Barchi, invited 160 graduates to the presidential residence in Piscataway to honor them as the first inductees into the Matthew Leydt Society, which recognizes graduating seniors for exceptional academic performance at Rutgers–New Brunswick.

Addressing the students and their families on May 17 at a commencement morning breakfast, President Barchi told his guests that the idea for the society was that of his wife, Francis, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, who thought the society would be an appropriate way to shine a spotlight on the top students in a graduating class.

“We realized that we don’t spend enough time recognizing the very, very best and brightest of our students,” President Barchi says. “We talk about the Big Ten, and we talk about winning football games. We talk about the grants and prizes that our faculty win. We talk about university rankings. But we don’t talk enough about the very best students who make this place what it is.”

The new honor society lauds students who have excelled in the classroom, in research labs, and in the arts during their undergraduate years. The 160 students honored, including nine Fulbright scholars, hail from schools at Rutgers–New Brunswick and were selected from nearly 8,000 undergraduates who earned degrees this year. One of them is Julia Xia, pictured with the Barchis in the inset, who will be in Indonesia as a Fulbright teaching assistant for the next year before enrolling at Emory University School of Medicine. Xia, a resident of Edison, New Jersey, was a cell biology and neuroscience honors student at the School of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Bioethics Society.

The Matthew Leydt Society is named for the first and only 1774 graduate of Queen’s College, the original name of Rutgers College and the forerunner of Rutgers University–New Brunswick. After graduation, he earned his license to enter the ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church.