Student Spotlight

Congress has set aside $5 million for an open educational resources pilot program -- the most significant federal push for alternative textbooks. Advocates are encouraged.

Three times since 2013, members in both houses of Congress have introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, which would create a federal program to fund the creation of open educational resources on a nationwide scale. Each time, that bill has faltered in committee.

For second-year Honors College (HC) student Paolo Arante, service provides the opportunity to engage in community partnership and empower a community to give back. Arante is a marketing major and dance minor who enjoys working with and supporting others through extracurricular activities, including serving as the service lead on the HC Serves Leadership Team.

The Rutgers students whose idea for a solar-powered water purification system helped them win the Hult Prize regional competition are raising money to pilot the business in India this summer.

The Honors College Changemaker Award is an annual scholarship established to recognize students who have demonstrated exceptional awareness and commitment to service, an integral part of our mission. Please join us in congratulating this year’s outstanding Changemaker Award recipients who have served in their communities in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and beyond:

April Nicklaus

How Research and Critical Thinking Skills in the Humanities Can Lead to Unexpected Opportunities

During my summer at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine last year, I conducted computational genetics research, focused, on finding genetic targets of evolution within wild mice populations. My work was very much enshrined in basic science, which includes researching the fundamentals of science, as opposed to studying applicable solutions to specific diseases, for example. These fundamentals remain important as they represent the foundation on which clinical applications are created.