Shaped by Camden, and now shaping it
Nyeema C. Watson was raised at 34th and Mitchell in East Camden, two blocks from a drug corner and 30 blocks from her future.
Nyeema C. Watson was raised at 34th and Mitchell in East Camden, two blocks from a drug corner and 30 blocks from her future.
"I was the ninth of 11 children, and my parents sheltered and protected me," says Watson, 38, who was named assistant chancellor for civic engagement at Rutgers-Camden last July.
"All of who I am is prefaced by my growing up here."
An ebullient, energetic woman who stays fit doing yoga - and climbing three flights to her Cooper Street office - Watson nurtures connections between a university and a community in which her roots are deep and deeply intertwined.
She knows Camden not just as a place where there's lots of poverty, but where plenty of people go to work, come home, and play with their children. "Kids are going to birthday parties," she notes. "They have childhoods. They have dreams."
Watson has a master's from the University of Pennsylvania, and undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Rutgers-Camden. Her parents and many of her siblings and other relatives live in the city. And so does she.
"Nyeema knows Camden, she's of Camden, she loves Camden," says chancellor Phoebe A. Haddon. "She's a tremendous resource."
But were it not for a chance conversation at Woodrow Wilson High School in the early 1990s, Watson might never have considered Rutgers-Camden. Or gotten into college at all.
"A teacher asked me where I was going to go to college, and I said, 'I don't know,' " Watson recalls.
Earlier, "a counselor had told me, 'You should be a beautician,' " she says, adding that while she deeply respects that profession, "I wanted to go to college."
So the thought of Camden students falling through the cracks and missing opportunities "drives my work," Watson says.
"I can look back on my childhood and understand what happens when [an institution] doesn't reach out to underrepresented students of color," she says.
"Now I have the resources to change that, to help students who look like me, who live in conditions like mine were. I can give them, and their families, information, resources, a pathway."
Rutgers students pursuing degrees in education, social work, and other fields traditionally have had off-campus internships, or performed community service.
With established public service programs such as the Rutgers Law School's legal clinic and the RAND Institute's local public policy research, "Rutgers-Camden has always engaged with the community," Watson notes.
"But historically, it wasn't strategic," she adds. "There were resources and knowledge that never seemed to get beyond [campus] in an intentional way."
As Watson sees it, civic engagement also is two-way: Students, and the university itself, can learn from and not merely serve the community.
In the 2014-15 academic year, 50 undergraduate "civic scholars" worked with 100 community organizations, such as Project H.O.P.E. (Homeless Outreach Program Enrichment), Cathedral Kitchen, and the Cooper-Grant Neighborhood Association.
Watson's office also is involved with after-school and summer programs in four district, charter, and parochial schools in North Camden aimed at boosting student achievement and strengthening the neighborhood.
"Nyeema is dedicated to helping improve the place she came from," says Melissa DePino, the Woodrow Wilson teacher who two decades ago asked Watson about her college plans.
"She pushed me to apply, and helped me apply, to Rutgers-Camden and Temple and other schools," Watson says. "If it wasn't for her -."
DePino, who left teaching and is now a Philadelphia communications consultant, vividly remembers students like Watson who "had amazing potential, but were in an environment that was hard to break out of."
Watson says that's one reason why she continues to live in the city that helped make her who she is today.
"It's important for people like me to stay here," she says, "because we understand what it's like to live here."
856-779-3845@inqkriordan