Newsroom

By Mike Deak
MyCentralJersey.com

December 13, 2021

BRANCHBURG - Caren Bateman, daughter of the late State Sen. Ray Bateman, has been named chair of the Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) Board of Trustees.

Bateman, elected to the post at the board's reorganization meeting on Dec. 7, succeeds Robert P. Wise, who served as chair since November 2015.

A member of the RVCC Board of Trustees since 2004, Wise, the retired president and chief executive officer of Hunterdon Healthcare, also served as the board's vice chair for Hunterdon County from 2011 to 2015.

Roger R. Locandro of Stockton was elected vice chair for Hunterdon County and Tracy DiFrancesco Zaikov of Watchung was chosen to continue serving as vice chair for Somerset County. The terms for chair and vice chairs are for one year.

A member of the RVCC Board of Trustees since January 2017, Bateman, a Readington resident, has served as the board's vice chair for Hunterdon since December 2017.

Bateman, the sister of State Sen. Kip Bateman, is the owner of the Somerville-based Shoebox Computer Services, Inc., which specializes in QuickBooks accounting and bookkeeping services.

In the early 1980s, she worked in the federal government in the office of Vice President George H. W. Bush. She also has been employed by Ortho Pharmaceutical in Raritan Borough.

Bateman is a former board member of the American Cancer Society and is a past president of Temple Beth-El in Hillsborough, where she also served on the board of trustees. She was a Girl Scout leader for 13 years in Hunterdon County.

Bateman received a BA in chemistry from the University of Vermont.

Her father, after retiring from political life, devoted himself to RVCC, which was literally in the backyard of his home in the North Branch section of Branchburg.

He was a member of the RVCC Board of Trustees since 1978 and served as chairman for 26 years. Some of the milestones of his tenure included the agreement with Hunterdon County that established RVCC as the first community college in New Jersey to serve two counties; the construction of the Theatre at RVCC with $2 million in private donations raised to match public funding; the expansion of the college library; the establishment of the first childcare center at a community college in New Jersey; the opening of the Planetarium; the opening of the Franklin Center; and the establishment of the Somerset County Police Academy on campus.

The Ray Bateman Center for Student Life and Leadership sustainable facility designed for collaborative learning, leadership building and student activities is named in his honor on the RVCC campus.

Under Wise’s leadership of the board, RVCC undertook several major projects, including the 23,500 square-foot expansion of the Christine Todd Whitman Science Center in fall 2016 and the construction of a state-of-the-art, 47,000 square foot Workforce Training Center.

Email: mdeak@mycentraljersey.com

Mike Deak is a reporter for mycentraljersey.com. To get unlimited access to his articles on Somerset and Hunterdon counties, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.