The top item on the list is something he inherited - implementing a vast higher-education overhaul, enacted last month, that, like the clock, has many moving parts, including a new partnership between Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University.

While Rutgers University needs to better understand the financial ramifications of the restructuring, Barchi said, it will not cause a tuition increase - though that doesn't mean there won't be tuition hikes. His objective, he said, will be to keep tuition "absolutely under control."

Tuition varies by school and program, but a typical full-time in-state student in the arts and sciences at New Brunswick will pay $13,073 this year in tuition and mandatory fees.

He also pledged to address spending on sports, which has drawn controversy on campus in recent years.

Barchi, 65, formerly president of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said he would focus on creating a strategic plan for Rutgers' future - hiring key leadership personnel, fund-raising, looking for efficiencies in the budget, and better marketing the university's image, especially outside the state.

Perhaps most important, his first year will be spent preparing to implement the state's higher-education restructuring plan, under which Rutgers is slated to absorb parts of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, including the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

The university's two governing boards have yet to formally sign off on the plan that the legislature passed and that Gov. Christie signed after months of controversy, though prominent members of the two bodies have expressed approval.

"It is a massive undertaking," Barchi said, speaking largely in support of the plan, in particular of its potential to allow Rutgers to grow in the health sciences.

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New Rutgers chief glad Camden campus staying part of school