Stadium at the Ronald N. Yurcak Field to Be Named RWJBarnabas Health Stadium
Rutgers Athletics will move to name the home venue of its men’s and women’s soccer program as the RWJBarnabas Health Stadium at Yurcak Field following the approval of a resolution at the Thursday Board of Governors meeting.
The naming of the stadium is part of a multi-year commitment between RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Athletics.
Dedicated on April 16, 1994, the stadium was named The Soccer Stadium at Yurcak Field in honor of Ronald N. Yurcak, a 1965 All-American Rutgers lacrosse player who made a generous donation to the university.
The venue was also home to the men’s and women’s lacrosse programs until 2013, when those games moved to SHI Stadium. The field has played host to several major sporting events, including the Big Ten Championships, and was previously the home field for the NSWL club Sky Blue FC (now known as Gotham FC). Top tier European clubs like Paris Saint-Germain FC (France), Brighton & Hove Albion (England) and FC Porto (Portugal) have all trained at the complex in recent years. Featuring a 120-foot by 75-foot playing surface, state-of-the-art video board and lighting, the stadium can house 5,000 fans in its spacious grandstand as well as several thousand more across the field in the stadium's berm area.
Rutgers Athletics and RWJBarnabas Health have enjoyed a longstanding partnership, including the construction of the RWJBarnabas Health Athletic Performance Center, which opened in 2019. The four-story facility hosts team areas, locker rooms, office space and practice areas for the men’s and women’s basketball programs, gymnastics and wrestling. It also features facilities for sports medicine, nutrition and strength and conditioning.
—Hasim Phillips
Ecologist Named the Inaugural Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professor
Brooke Maslo, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, has been named the inaugural holder of the Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professorship.
Maslo’s appointment is supported by a gift from Joanna Burger, a Distinguished Professor with appointments in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the School of Arts and Sciences, and Michael Gochfeld, professor emeritus in the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, to establish the professorship in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
“I am beyond honored to be selected as the Inaugural Burger Endowed Legacy Professor,” Maslo said. “Dr. Burger was instrumental in shaping my academic career trajectory so many years ago, and through this endeavor, she is continuing to promote both wildlife conservation and women in science. I am truly grateful for her mentorship, as well as Dr. Gochfeld’s generosity in supporting this professorship.”
In this role, Maslo will continue her research on the complex interactions between environmental change and species’ evolutionary, behavioral and physiological characteristics. As an applied ecologist, her work spans coastal ecosystem responses to sea-level rise, wildlife management in the face of emerging infectious diseases and restoration of ecosystem function in vulnerable habitats.
This is the first legacy professorship established within the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. Legacy professorships, approved by the Rutgers Board of Governors in 2020, enable current, emeritus and retired faculty and their families to create endowed positions that honor their legacy.
—Megan Schumann
Sarah Allred Named Inaugural Gerald Grob Endowed Legacy Professor
The Rutgers Board of Governors has approved the appointment of Sarah Allred as the inaugural Gerald Grob Endowed Legacy Professor, effective July 1, 2026.
The professorship was established through a gift from Margaret Marsh and Howard F. Gillette, Jr. to honor Gerald Grob, a distinguished historian of medicine and longtime mentor to Marsh. The fund is designed to support and retain scholars whose work advances the study of health, medicine, and policy, while strengthening interdisciplinary research and teaching at Rutgers University–Camden and the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.
Allred, a professor of psychology with Rutgers–Camden and a leading scholar in visual perception and memory, brings a multidisciplinary approach that integrates behavioral psychophysics, computational modeling, and large-scale data analysis. In addition to a strong record of external funding, including support from the National Science Foundation, Allred has played a key leadership role in advancing health equity initiatives across South Jersey through work with the Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Policy and the South Jersey Institute for Population Health.
The appointment follows recommendations from university leadership and endorsement by the Board’s Committee on Academic and Student Affairs.
Endowed professorships represent one of the university’s highest faculty honors, recognizing excellence in research, teaching, and public engagement.
—Caroline Brobeil
Rutgers Board Approves New Name for Arts and Sciences Unit in Camden
The Rutgers University Board of Governors has approved the renaming of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Camden to the School of Arts and Sciences–Camden, affirming the unit’s role as a comprehensive academic school and aligning its designation with parallel schools across the university.
The name change, which takes effect May 1, 2026, brings Rutgers–Camden in line with academic naming conventions at Rutgers–New Brunswick and Rutgers–Newark, where arts and sciences units are formally designated as schools. University leaders noted that the change reflects both the unit’s scope and its standing within the institution.
The proposal received strong support across the university, including approval by the faculty and endorsements from campus and university leadership. The Committee on Academic and Student Affairs reviewed the proposal in March and recommended approval before it was formally authorized by the Board of Governors.
The transition to the School of Arts and Sciences–Camden does not alter academic programs, degree offerings, or governance structures. Instead, university officials emphasized that the new name more clearly conveys the school’s mission and academic breadth to students, faculty, and external audiences, while reinforcing consistency across Rutgers’ campuses.
—Caroline Brobeil
Establishing the Tortora Pato Family Endowed Legacy Professorship
Since their arrival at Rutgers in 2021, distinguished psychiatrists and husband-and-wife Carlos Pato and Michele Tortora Pato have overseen behavioral health, addictions and genomic psychiatry research, a rapidly growing field in psychiatric medicine that investigates the genetic connections to mental health, at the university.
Carlos — executive chair, departments of psychiatry, senior vice president, research, training and academic affairs at University Behavioral Health Care, and associate director of the Brain Health Institute — and Michele, director of the Center for Psychiatric Health and Genomics, are both professors of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. They are furthering this mission by establishing an endowed professorship that honors their family.
The Rutgers University Board of Governors voted to approve the Tortora Pato Family Endowed Legacy Professorship, which is designed to “honor, retain or recruit faculty in the field of psychiatry and genomics, and alternatively available for the incumbent’s teaching, research and professional activities.”
“Michele and I have devoted our lives to focus on serious mental illness and understanding the biology behind it to define new treatments,” said Carlos Pato. “This is an opportunity to pay it forward and create an avenue that would perpetuate a research focus in psychiatry — and especially genetics.”
—Patti Zielinski
Board of Governors Approves Updated Name for Jameson Residence Hall D
The Rutgers University Board of Governors approved an updated name for Jameson Residence Hall D, which will now be known as the NJSGA Evans Scholars Liberty National Scholarship House.
The change follows a request from the Evans Scholars Foundation to revise the name originally approved in October 2025, when the board recognized a generous gift from the foundation supporting the renovation of the residence hall. The updated name reflects a shift in how the foundation recognizes its partners in supporting the program.
The Evans Scholars program provides full tuition and housing scholarships to high-achieving caddies with demonstrated financial need. Founded by the Western Golf Association, the program has supported thousands of students nationwide in accessing higher education. In 2022, the Western Golf Association’s Evans Scholars Foundation and the New Jersey State Golf Association’s Caddie Scholarship Foundation announced they established a long-term partnership to provide college scholarships and expand youth caddie opportunities in New Jersey. Rutgers-New Brunswick is among a select group of universities that host Evans Scholars in a dedicated residential community, where students live together as part of a shared academic and residential experience.
The residence hall will continue to house Evans Scholars as part of Rutgers’ ongoing partnership with the foundation and its broader efforts to expand access and support student success.
—Megan Schumann
Marian R. Stuart Center for Wellbeing Established
The Rutgers University Board of Governors voted to establish the Marian R. Stuart Center for Wellbeing at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The center is named for Marian R. Stuart, emeritus professor of family medicine and community health who holds a doctorate in psychology from Rutgers, in honor of her “worldwide contributions to health care.”
Stuart joined the faculty of the department of family medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 1978, where over her 30-year career, she educated clinicians on the influence of psychosocial factors on health. The center will offer convenient in-home medical care, informed by academic medicine at Rutgers Health. Stuart, who retired from the medical school in 2008, continues to maintain a private practice and is the senior author of The Fifteen Minute Hour: Efficient and Effective Patient-Centered Consultation Skills, which has been in print for 40 years, and is a co-author of Coping with the Stressed Out People in Your Life.
—Patti Zielinski
