Largest Class Ever Graduates from Rutgers-Newark

The Newark campus of Rutgers University graduated its largest class ever Wednesday at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

An estimated 3,300 undergraduate degrees were conferred, along with 78 doctorates, also a record for the 105-year-old campus.

Wednesday’s commencement speaker was Lonnie Bunch, one of the nation’s most prominent historians and a founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. The museum is scheduled to be completed in 2015.

Bunch, 56, grew up in Belleville, and drew from his own experiences as an African-American in a community that at the time was overwhelmingly white. He said those experiences fired his curiosity about other cultures and history in general.

He also urged graduates Wednesday to seek out a mission in life that speaks to them personally.

“So I would argue that the burden, the challenge for the Class of 2013 is to find your own good fight,” said Bunch, who was also awarded an honorary doctorate. “It is to find ways that you can make America better, to realize that your skills, your creativity and your educational achievement are needed to work for the greater good.”