Gustav Friedrich is retiring after serving ten years as Dean of the School for Communication, Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers University. On May 29, 2008, the Rutgers SCILS Program Associates met to honor him. Dr. Freidrich was presented with a selection of testimonials from library and information organizations throughout the state, as well as a beautiful paperweight inscribed: “Intrigued by the Challenge, Committed to the Journey, Inspired by the Destination.”

The Rutgers SCILS Program Associates is an organization with representatives from the broad range of Library and Information Science professions in New Jersey that recognize each other’s contributions to library services and the profession, that advocate for each other as the need arises, that provide broad support for SCILS, and that share information that may lead to further collaboration.

The New Jersey State Library is proud to have been associated with Dr. Gustav Friedrich during his tenure as Dean of SCILS, beginning in 1998.

During this time, the State Library and Rutgers SCILS have partnered in new and groundbreaking ventures. The New Jersey State Library presented a very successful Diversity Conference in 2004, with SCILS faculty participating as presenters. Rutgers SCILS also partnered with the New Jersey State Library, Thomas Edison State College, the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative and the New Jersey Library Association to receive two grants from the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program from IMLS, totaling more than $1.5 million, to recruit urban librarians. As a direct result of this grant, eight students have received their M.L.I.S. degrees, ten students are currently enrolled in the M.L.I.S. program at SCILS and two students are enrolled in the Ph.D. program. Dr. Friedrich’s encouragement of this grant program is helping to revitalize our urban libraries in New Jersey by providing new professionals eager to work in this environment.

These successes occurred because of Dr. Friedrich’s openness and spirit of cooperation, coupled with his strong support of libraries.

We wish Dr. Friedrich a retirement as full and successful as his career has been.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.