Awards Recognize Excellence in Advancing Diversity, Inclusion and Access at Rutgers

More than two dozen faculty, staff, students and organizations were recognized by the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes

Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, who in 1997 founded a charter school that has since grown into a K-12 program providing its students the opportunity to attend Rutgers tuition-free, was recognized by the university for her life’s work serving the Camden community.

Bonilla-Santiago, the founder of LEAP Academy University Charter School, was named the 2024 recipient of the Clement A. Price Human Dignity Award during a ceremony Thursday. The award is the highest honor the university bestows upon members of the community for advancing the common good.

She was among more than two dozen faculty, staff, students and school organizations recognized by the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes (CACP)for their achievements to promote equity and diversity.

"The CACP Awards is an opportunity to recognize demonstrated commitments to appreciating diversity, building inclusion, and substantive and sustained community engagement across Rutgers," said Joan Collier, assistant vice president for equity and inclusion. "The awards make visible the work that adds to the richness of university life but that can go unnoticed in the day-to-day of university life."

The Clement A. Price Human Dignity Awards are named after the late Rutgers Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor who died in 2014. Price was a revered voice, the official City Historian of Newark and a renowned scholar of African American history at Rutgers-Newark. He was the founding director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience, which was named posthumously in his honor. In 2021, this long-standing award was modified to emphasize a person's body of work and proven history, recognizing accomplishments befitting a lifetime achievement award.

Bonilla-Santiago, a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers-Camden, is known as the “patron saint of Cooper Street,” which is where the charter school is located in downtown Camden.  Since 1997, Bonilla-Santiago has secured about $150 million for the six buildings that serve LEAP, an acronym for “leadership, education and partnership.”  Today, the charter school system has transformed four blocks on Camden’s Cooper Street into a vibrant educational corridor.

The educational system that Bonilla-Santiago has created begins helping the children of Camden as early as infancy. The Early Learning Research Academy provides early childhood education to infants, toddlers and preschoolers. It is one of five Rutgers Centers of Excellence that Bonilla-Santiago created to support families in Camden. The idea is to serve the entire community, and the centers link Rutgers faculty, students and resources to LEAP’s programs.

Since graduating its first class in 2005, more than 3,000 students graduated from the program, with 100% of each class earning high school degrees.

Thanks to the rigorous curriculum developed and overseen by Bonilla-Santiago, these LEAP graduates enter some of the nation’s most prominent universities. Each year, 30 to 40 students enroll at Rutgers, with support from the Rutgers Alfredo Santiago Endowed Scholarship, which she created in honor of her late husband.

She has extended her work beyond Camden, working to create educational programs and partnerships in Puerto Rico and Cuba.

To ensure her work continues, Bonilla-Santiago is teaching the next generation of social changemakers at Rutgers. The Jump Start program, for example, places undergraduate Rutgers students in preschool classrooms, where they learn to help children with their literacy skills as part of the federal work-study program.

Three other categories of awards recognizing others within Rutgers were also presented.

The Public Good Pinnacle Awards, recognizing outstanding university collaborations in partnership with, and for the benefit of, the community, were given to:

• School of Nursing-Camden
• Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement (DICE), Rutgers-Camden
• Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs, Rutgers-Camden
• Emily Allen-Hornblower, faculty, associate professor of classics, Department of Classics, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers-New Brunswick

The Torchbearer Awards, recognizing the achievements of faculty and staff, were given to:

• Taja-Nia Henderson, faculty, professor of law (on leave), Rutgers Law School, Newark; dean, Rutgers Graduate School-Newark
• Stacy Hawkins, faculty, professor of law, Rutgers Law School, Camden
• Rachel Derr, faculty, associate dean, baccalaureate programs and clinical assistant professor, School of Nursing-Camden
• Oscar Holmes IV, faculty, associate professor and director, Rutgers University Executive Program, School of Business, Rutgers-Camden
• Marla Blunt-Carter, faculty, associate professor of professional practice, School of Social Work, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Lindsay Dhanani, faculty, associate professor, human resource management, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Jessica Hamilton, faculty, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Eveling Hondros, faculty, assistant teaching professor and coordinator of Spanish for Health Profession, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Rutgers-Camden
• Deepa Kumar, Faculty, professor of journalism and media studies, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• David Salas-de la Cruz, faculty, associate professor of chemistry/ director of chemistry graduate program, Department of Chemistry, Rutgers-Camden
• Madinah Elamin, staff, senior director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Douglass Residential College, Rutgers-New Brunswick

The Impact Awards, recognizing students and student organizations, were given to:

• Amber Stone, graduate student, School of Public Health, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Shaan Mody, undergraduate student, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers-Camden
• Jenna Ahmed, undergraduate student, College of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers-Camden
• Jae Kerstetter, graduate student, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Emily Hanselman, graduate student, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Sathya Gopinath, undergraduate student, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Jessica Huertas Monterroso, graduate student, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Harsh Mahajan, graduate student, Rutgers Law School, Newark
• Emily Sullivan, undergraduate student, Rutgers-New Brunswick Honors College, School of Engineering, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Paolo Miyashiro Bedoya, graduate student, Center for Social Justice Education & LGBT Communities, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• Pranita Sannidhi, undergraduate student, Rutgers Honors College, Rutgers-New Brunswick
• HombRes, recognized student organization, Division of Student Academic Success/TRiO Student Support Services, Rutgers-Camden
• The Multicultural Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Actions, recognized student organization, Rutgers Health