Rutgers Alumni Association To Induct 2025 Loyal Sons & Loyal Daughters

Seven Rutgers University alumni, along with Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway have been designated Loyal Sons and Loyal Daughters by the Rutgers Alumni Association (RAA). The honorees will be inducted during a “scarlet-tie” affair to be held at Neilson Dining Hall on the Cook/Douglass Campus of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ on Saturday, April 5, 2025.

A tradition that began in 1958, the Loyal Sons and Loyal Daughters of Rutgers are individuals who have made a meaningful and long-standing commitment to the betterment of Rutgers, The State University by exemplifying extraordinary alumni service or by making a significant impact on University life and culture. Nominations are made by existing Loyal Sons & Daughters, with the honorees named by a special selection committee. Founded in 1831, the RAA is the nation's fourth oldest alumni association serving over 350,000 alumni on the New Brunswick / Piscataway campus of Rutgers.

The 2025 Loyal Sons and Loyal Daughters are:

Mark Angelson RC'72, RLAW'75

Angelson, a resident of New York City, has served on the Rutgers Board of Governors, the University’s main governing body, since 2014. Governors receive no monetary compensation and devote countless hours to serving Rutgers. Angelson chaired the Board of Governors from 2019-2022, and during that time served as an ex officio member of all Board committees. He served as the Board’s Vice Chair from 2017-2019 and again from 2022-2024. Angelson chaired the Board’s Finance and Facilities Committee from 2014-2019 and chaired the Board’s Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics from 2022-2024. He served on the Board’s Executive Committee 2014-2024, and as its Chair from 2019-2022. Angelson was inducted into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2014, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2023, the University’s two highest honors. In 2016, Angelson was the inaugural recipient of Rutgers Law School’s Alumni Leadership Award. His proudest accomplishment is having chaired the 2019-2020 Presidential Search Committee that recruited Jonathan Holloway as the 21st President of Rutgers University.

William Downey RC'79 GSM’83

Downey, a resident of West Caldwell, NJ graduated from Rutgers in 1979 and the Rutgers Graduate School of Management in 1983. His whole adult life has been dedicated to service, first as a Boy Scout, then as an undergraduate as a brother of Alpha Phi Omega (APO), the national service fraternity. One of the three cardinal principles of APO is service, including service to your university.

After graduating, Downey served on the Board of the Rutgers Business School Alumni Association (RBSAA). He led an educational event for the RBSAA with the NJ symphony orchestra in 2011. For that event, Downey received the Ernest E. McMahon Award from the Rutgers University Alumni Association for creative programming.

Currently, Downey is an advisor to the head coach and team mentor for the Rutgers University Women’s Golf team. He designed and led a fund-raising program to allow each scholarship athlete to have custom golf clubs, closing the gap with all of the other big ten programs. In 2019, women’s golf recognized his service to the team and to the community with the Don and Penny Pray Service Award.

Downey is also Co-Chair of the board of the Child Health Institute of NJ (CHINJ), part of RWJ Medical School. CHINJ’s mission is to improve child health, focused on neurodevelopment issues like autism, immunological diseases like type-1 diabetes and IBD, metabolic disorders like obesity and such maternal health issues as pre-term labor.

David Earl CC'76

Earl, a resident of Monroe, NJ, has been active with the Cook College Alumni Association the university for decades, serving multiple three-year terms on the executive board. No job is too small for Earl, and he is considered an unsung hero. Earl has been serving as the Chair of the Cook Alumni Ag Field Day committee since 2004. Since 2014, Earl has also filled bellies by serving as a fryer at the Cook Alumni Fish Fry. For more than two decades, Earl has worked behind the scenes as a member of the Federation homecoming committee, and as a volunteer for the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences graduation.

Sharon Gant Yorlano DC'79

Yorlano, a resident of Somerset, NJ has selflessly served her class, the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College (AADC) and Rutgers University since her graduation in 1979. Over the past four decades, Yorlando has served in numerous class officer positions for her class. She has served on the AADC Board in various capacities, including VP of Alumnae Relations. Yorlando has served on and chaired various committees at the AADC too numerous to mention here. For her ongoing dedication, commitment and service, the AADC presented Yorlando the 2012 Alumnae Recognition Award and in 2019 the Corwin Award, the AADC’s highest award for volunteer service.

Jonathan Scott Holloway

Holloway, a U.S. historian, took office as the 21st president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, on July 1, 2020. He also serves as a University Professor and Distinguished Professor. Holloway has focused his tenure at Rutgers on the concept of a “beloved community,” which stems from the belief that those within the Rutgers community have more in common than they do not.

During his tenure as president, Jonathan Holloway had led the university to many accomplishments, including the U.S. News and World Report rankings where all three Rutgers locations are recognized as being among the top 100 national universities with Rutgers-New Brunswick in the top 15 of public universities.

Other milestones during his tenure include raising record donations and research funds. Undergraduate applications are at an all time high with the university experiencing a surge in undergraduate enrollment. Research revenue to faculty increased by 40%, and Rutgers has expanded its medical academic programming and infrastructure.

Also under his leadership Rutgers has endorsed a climate goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040. Showing further commitment to students and the community at all levels, Rutgers, under Holloway, established a public service-focused summer internship program, commissioned a diversity strategic plan, established a commitment to civic engagement and civil discourse and expanded access and opportunity to the university through programs including Scarlet Promise Grants and Scarlet Service and supported a long-term initiative to support civic education and create broad civic engagement opportunities with a strong emphasis on student involvement and solution-focused dialogue.

Dr. Holloway is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. He is a Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Holloway is married to Aisling Colón. They have a daughter, Emerson, and son, Ellison.

Nimesh Jhaveri PHARM’90

Jhaveri, a resident of Long Grove, IL and a 1990 graduate of the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, has a long history of giving back to his alma mater, not only to the School of Pharmacy by serving on the Pharmacy Advisory Board and the Dean’s Leadership Council, but also to Rutgers University as a member of the Board of Trustees as an Alumnus Trustee from 2011 to 2023. Jhaveri was a member of the Board of Governors’ Committees on Audit and Health Affairs and even served as the inaugural chair of the Committee on Health Affairs in recognition of his healthcare experience, a role traditionally held by members of the Board of Governors. Jhaveri was also a member of the Board of Trustees’ Committee on Diversity and Inclusion; Task Force on Legislative Engagement, Nominating Committee, Task Force on Assessment, Executive Committee, and Rutgers Research Educational Foundation. Jhaveri was elected Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees in 2021 and Chair of the Board of Trustees in 2022. Upon the end of his term, Nimesh’s peers on the Board elected him a Trustee Emeritus in recognition of his service to the boards and to the University. Jhaveri also served on the 2019 Presidential Search Committee that resulted in the hiring of Jonathan Holloway and was the commencement speaker for the School of Pharmacy’s convocation in 2003 and 2013. His wife, Sejal Jhaveri, is a graduate of the Rutgers University College of Nursing.

Steven K. Korotky, Ph.D. RC'75

Dr. Korotky, a resident of Toms River, NJ is being recognized for his nearly decade-long individual and leadership contributions to the renovation, maintenance, documentation, accessibility, and promotion of Rutgers’ historic Daniel S. Schanck Observatory, which was established in 1865, and its vintage refractor telescope.

In the fall of 2015, upon learning that The Cap & Skull Society and Rutgers University were nearing the completion of their joint project to save and renovate the observatory, which had fallen into disrepair, Korotky put together a team of dedicated individuals to locate, recover, restore, and repatriate its main telescope. The Prin telescope, which Steve and his wife Pat (nee’ Benting, RC’76, B.A., Biological Mathematics) had the opportunity to use as undergraduates and members of the Rutgers Astronomical Society, had been disassembled and removed roughly 14 years after it and the Observatory were last used to teach astronomy in 1980. Korotky secured permission to search for the Prin telescope from the Dean of Mathematics and Physical Sciences on behalf of the university and located it in the possession of the United Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey at their facility in New Jersey’s Jenny Jump State Forest. His team learned that the Prin had been there in storage since being relocated in 1994. The then newly-formed UACNJ consortium had been unable to make use of the Prin because two critical parts had been taken or misplaced prior to it being removed from the Schanck. Unfortunately, several other key parts were also lost during its time in the forest, and to date none of the missing parts have been found. But that did not deter Korotky and his team from their goal of completing an essential aspect of the renovation of the Observatory - reinstating the Prin as its functional centerpiece.

With the help of the two other members of the core team – friends and fellow physicists Mihaela Dinu and Bob Brubaker – Steve and Pat gathered up the roughly 600 pounds of the Prin that remained at Jenny Jump and drove them to their home where Steve began the process of disassembling, inventorying, and restoring the surviving pieces of the telescope. By June of 2016 he had restored the individual pieces of the Prin coincident with the rededication of the renovated Schanck Observatory on its 150 th anniversary. By December of that same year the team had reassembled the Prin telescope in the Schanck Observatory, albeit with nonfunctioning mockups of the several critical missing components. Over the course of the next two years Steve researched, designed, and received unsolicited donations to make functional replicas of nearly all the missing parts. And on the evening of Friday, May 25, 2018, the moon was viewed through the Prin telescope in the Schanck Observatory – an event that had not happened there in more than 38 years.

To this day, Steve and Pat have continued to provide educational tours of the observatory - hosting over one thousand individuals and retelling the history of the Schanck Observatory, its importance in expanding the teaching of science at Rutgers, and the story of its telescope’s remarkable journey and meticulous restoration.

Gloria Vanderham RC'00

Vanderham, a resident of Holmdel, NJ has demonstrated devotion to Rutgers University since her time as a student On the Banks. During her tenure, she actively participated in a variety of campus organizations, serving as a member of the Kirkpatrick Chapel choir, Delta Gamma Fraternity, and a preceptor to first-year and sophomore students. She also held several prominent leadership positions within the Rutgers Panhellenic and Northeast Panhellenic Councils. In her junior year, Vanderham was tasked with leading marketing and communications efforts for the revived Rutgers University Dance Marathon—an annual fundraising event thatbegan in New Brunswick in 1971 but was later discontinued in the late 1980s. Under her leadership, the spring 1999 edition of the RU Dance Marathon proved to be a resounding success. Vanderham was one of two students chosen to represent the School of Communications and Information at the 2000 Rutgers University commencement.

Since then, Vanderham has consistently given back to her alma mater, acting as a mentor, sharing insights about her career path with students, and serving in various alumni leadership roles. These roles include co-chairing the Class of 2000’s 15th Reunion Committee and holding various positions within the Rutgers University Alumni Association, such as Secretary, Vice Chair, and Chair, and chairing multiple committees. Vanderham played an instrumental role in engaging alumni across a wide range of Rutgers communities, fostering a culture of engagement and inclusivity. A highly recognizable Rutgers University Alumni ambassador, Vanderham actively promotes the university's mission and achievements at numerous University and Foundation events, as well as through online forums and her personal social media channels.

Vanderham's strategic contributions have been integral to connecting, shaping, and advising alumni philanthropy and engagement strategies for external campaigns, such as Scarlet Forever, We aRe yoU, and Rutgers Giving Day. Vanderham is also a vital ambassador for the upcoming Rutgers Takes on the Garden State campaign. Vanderham was selected to serve on the 22nd Presidential Search Committee. Vanderham's dedication and achievements were recently recognized with the prestigious Rutgers School of Communication & Information Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumni Award. Vanderham's Scarlet roots run deep, as numerous family members—including her older brother, husband, younger brother, sister-in-law, and even her mother— also hold credentials from Rutgers University. Her commitment to alma mater is further strengthened as her son continues the family tradition, currently attending Rutgers University's School of Arts and Sciences as a first-year student.

To find out more about the event and the Rutgers Alumni Association, visit www.rutgersalumni.org or call (848) 932-7474. Deadline to register is March 21st.

RSVP: https://www.rutgersalumni.org/loyal-sons-and-loyal-daughters/2025-loyal-sons-and-daughters