First-Generation Students

I'm Chris Malloy, the Chancellor of Rutgers–New Brunswick, a proud Rutgers alumnus, and I was a first-generation college student. I had the opportunity in my family to be the first one to attend college. I'm the oldest of four boys. My parents never had a chance to go to college themselves. My father was a U.S. Marine. My mother was a homemaker. It means that I really was the first one in my family to have a chance to really get away from home, to meet other people in an environment, to meet students from all around the world.

Taking advantage of everything possible at Rutgers is really key. The university has so much to offer. It's so large. It's really important to find your passion, to explore new things, to take risks, to find mentors, and it's not just professors, it's the staff. It's a whole variety of students that you actually find at a university. My best friends are still from Rutgers now almost 45 years ago. And so, it's just an adventure that you have to explore. A Rutgers education to me was, has really changed my life completely. I have learned the adventure of learning at Rutgers.

It's the vision that one can find by being at a big university that really helps you shape yourself, and it's really some of the people that you meet here that help guide you along paths like this. You know, and I thought I'd come here to get a good career, to get a job, I never thought that I would even go to graduate school. I wanted to pursue a pharmacy degree initially. I worked as a pharmacist, but came back to graduate school. So really, what it means is you don't know what your future's going to be.

You might end up being the next dean of a school or a chancellor of a university, and that's the exciting adventure that one can have by taking advantage of all the academic opportunities at a university. I can't tell you enough of how amazing it is to actually be the chancellor of the Rutgers campus that I came to almost 50 years ago. I never thought I would be chancellor of Rutgers. I'm proud to be chancellor. It's exciting to meet all the students that come here every year. Rutgers is a really terrific place.