In his 95th year of life, School of Engineering alumnus Harold Borkan and family visited campus, laying the groundwork for establishing the Harold Borkan Endowed Scholarship.
This year, Adrian Nylec, a junior electrical and computer engineering major, was the inaugural recipient of the scholarship.
“This award means a lot to me,” Nylec says. “I’m a low-income, first-generation student and my family and I struggle to afford my college education. This award means I get to worry a little less about our finances and can sleep better at night.”
Nylec had the opportunity to meet virtually with two of Harold’s three sons, Gary and Brad, and his partner Hazel Stix this spring – to offer thanks for the support and hear anecdotes about the fund’s namesake. “They were all very kind and very happy with me being the first recipient of the scholarship,” Nylec reports. “I was honored to receive the award from the family.”
Helping Students Realize Their Potential
“The goal of the Harold Borkan fund is to help students afford their tuition,” the family wrote, sharing sentiments also embraced by the third brother, Ron. “Education has always been a key component of our family life. The focus was not just on academic learning, but also on combining real-life experiences, common sense, and making one’s own luck by being willing to try new things. To be able to help a few students achieve more with their lives would fulfill our father’s ambition to give back to the university.”
An ambition also echoed through the Jean and Harold Borkan Opportunity Fund for Bunting Scholars, an award Harold established in 2017 in memory of his wife of 52 years. A graduate of Douglass College, their shared legacy benefits women striving to complete a college education later in life.
Harold Borkan graduated from Rutgers University in 1950 with highest honors, second in his class of 62 electrical engineering majors. As a student, he was instrumental in establishing Eta Kappa Nu, the honorary electrical engineering fraternity at Rutgers.
Borkan, who also earned a master’s degree from Rutgers in 1954, was the first Rutgers graduate to join the technical staff at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, where he helped to innovate camera tubes to record color TV programs, as well as thin-film transistors leading to the thin screens of all laptop computers and monitors. The recipient of two RCA Achievement Awards, he held nine patents and authored dozens of papers.
He capped off his illustrious career by becoming director of the Microelectronics Division of the US Army Electronics Technology and Devices Lab (ETDL) in 1981, before retiring in 1990 as its deputy director. Under his stewardship, EDTL was a two-time recipient of the Army Laboratory of the Year Award.
Gary, Brad, and Hazel recently wrote that Harold "was extremely proud to have been trained in electrical engineering at Rutgers. He was the first in his family to attend university, and that was made possible by the GI bill.”
Harold, they added, firmly believed that everyone should have the opportunity to live up to their potential. Crediting education as key to his success, he instilled in his family and others the importance of becoming more knowledgeable. He would be likely to advise current students, even after graduation, to question, think, and strive for understanding and achievement while staying within the confines of rigorous scientific endeavor.
The scholarship gives Nylec an opportunity to follow his own journey, and the advice that Borkan might have given him, according to his sons. Ask questions. Stay alert. Communicate. Don’t be shy. In the words of Teddy Roosevelt, strive for a ‘strenuous life’ and ‘dare mighty things.’ And always, always be learning.
