NJIT Student Senate Makes Historic, Morale-Boosting Gift to the Highlander Student Emergency Fund
Tulika Das, a biomedical engineer who aspires to discover new treatments for traumatic brain injury, confronted her own health care conundrum this summer just as she was making the leap from master’s to doctoral student: She lost her job in the pandemic-driven shutdown, landed in the hospital after suffering an allergic reaction and found herself short of funds to cover her co-payment.
“This is the first time I’m living outside of my family’s house and I’m far from my home in Kolkata, India. As an international student, you arrive in a new country and have to figure out how to manage all kinds of situations,” Das recounted. “I was also in the process of paying to extend my visa to pursue a Ph.D. in Professor Bryan Pfister’s brain injury lab, so it was a difficult period.”
Two months later, she is relieved to report that she not only secured financial support to halve her hospital debt, but discovered a supportive community in the process. A timely award from NJIT’s Highlander Student Emergency Fund, she said, came to the rescue.
While the Fund was established nearly a decade ago, it became a focus for fundraising this past spring, shortly after the pandemic drove the New York and New Jersey region into lockdown. Between April 1 and June 30 alone, the NJIT community contributed $175,000. An infusion of $50,000 from the NJIT Student Senate earlier this month has boosted the Fund's restorative powers substantially.
The student organization, which typically makes investments in the campus, opted this summer for a direct, unprecedented stake in its fellow students, said Anuj Patel, the Senate president since May.
“Every year, we use unspent funds from student organizations’ activity fees to put toward major projects, such as the renovation of the Campus Center lobby. This year, we decided to help NJIT students,” he said, adding, “I’m really glad we did this. Many students who were expecting internships found themselves unemployed when those businesses temporarily shut down. This was a universal phenomenon across the region. I know of students across NJIT, including some friends, who are working three and four jobs to make ends meet.”
NJIT President Joel Bloom applauded the student senators for their “wonderful generosity and decisive action.”
“To recognize – and act on – the urgent needs of their fellow students at this uniquely difficult time in the life of our country is to me a shining example of student leadership at its best,” Bloom said. “This is such great news for our community on so many levels.”
The Fund, designed to remove temporary financial barriers that hamper students’ progress toward their degrees, currently provides grants of up to $500 for unanticipated emergency expenses. Recipients have applied them toward medical expenses, housing costs, books and other course materials, as well the replacement of possessions lost in fires, floods and other catastrophes.
In light of the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic, grants from the emergency fund may also now be used to pay tuition and to ensure access to laptops, webcams and other educational technology.
“This year, students have also used grants to pay for groceries, utilities - specifically for Wi-Fi, prescription medicine and, in a few instances, assistance for our international students to purchase airline tickets to return home,” said Theresa McGuckin, executive director of annual giving.
As of early August, the Fund had distributed $210,250, for a total of 455 awards, or approximately $462 per student, said Kenneth Alexo, Jr., NJIT’s vice president for development and alumni relations.
"We have learned much during the past five months about the determination, resolve and kindness of the NJIT community,” Alexo said. “Given how many of our alumni, friends and now students have stepped forward to help their fellow Highlanders by generously supporting the student emergency fund, I have no doubt that we will emerge from the COVID crisis an even stronger university in the future."
For her part, a grateful Das hopes to contribute herself someday.
“This was very helpful to me,” she said. “I’d like to donate to the fund myself, and hopefully I can do that.”