Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni inductee James F. Dougherty RC’74, GSNB’75 in the Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College on the College Avenue campus. Photo by John O’Boyle.
James F. Dougherty was a Rutgers University–New Brunswick graduate student contemplating a career as a veterinarian in the mid-1970s when he took a break from working in a lab.
“I went outside at lunchtime and there was this grungy little terrier-esque dog all covered with something,” he says.
He picked up the filthy, smelly young stray that was roaming around Passion Puddle near Bartlett Hall on the Cook College campus and took it into the lab, washing it off in a sink. After removing the brown, muddy gunk from its black and white fur, Dougherty took the dog home to his apartment he shared with three other students. “We’ve got a dog,” he told them.
It would be his first dog. He had never lived in a home with a dog as a pet.
“I named her Molly—short for molecule—for whatever it was that was covering her body,” he says.
Dougherty in 2016 with dogs Liam and Declan, both soft-coated wheaten terriers. He now has a 12-year-old of the same breed named Ronan.
He later had Molly spayed at a veterinarian’s office in East Brunswick where he volunteered. When he moved to Philadelphia to study to be a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania, his mother took Molly in for him because his apartment didn’t allow pets.
Molly would go on to be a beloved member of the Dougherty family for 16 years and the first in a series of dogs he would own. She also would be one of many thousands of dogs and cats treated by Dougherty or veterinarians, including a roster of specialists, who worked at Metropolitan Veterinary Associates, a practice he cofounded in 1986. His accomplished and rewarding career ultimately would earn him the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
The inspiring moments of his veterinary career were numerous. “There always would be some way you could create joy for people in their lives and for their pets,” says Dougherty, who sold the practice and retired in 2023.
“One of the greatest things in the world to see is when somebody drops off a blind dog in the morning and the ophthalmologist removes their cataracts,” he says. “The dog walks out into the waiting room and you see its tail start wagging. People usually start crying because their dog hasn’t seen them in a year or two. Observing things like that was great.”
The Road to Giving Back to Rutgers
Dougherty’s kindness and generosity of spirit have not been limited to caring for animals. They have been in action at Rutgers for decades, both in volunteering and generous financial support of the university, particularly in the areas of LGBTQ+ issues and the Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College.
Born in South Philadelphia, he moved to Deptford in South Jersey with his mother when he was 8, where they lived with his grandmother. His mother worked as a barmaid at a corner bar and his grandmother worked for the phone company in Philadelphia, leaving as early as 4 a.m. each morning for the long commute by bus and train.
When he first visited Rutgers–New Brunswick in the late 1960s, he says he “immediately felt at home,” leaving behind painful memories of being bullied in elementary, middle, and high school.
A first-generation college student, he earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 1974 and a master’s in animal science in 1975, graduating debt free. “I’ve always been very grateful to Rutgers for that,” he says.
Dougherty’s motivation to support Rutgers accelerated in the 1990s when he was cleaning up the basement of his late mother’s home and found a storage box full of documents pertaining to aid he had received from Rutgers more than 20 years before. He had been an undergraduate who benefitted from the Rutgers Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) program in addition to other need and merit-based scholarships.
Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College sophomore Nkosazana Burke-Douglas with Dougherty in the Dougherty Study lounge.
“I grew up not having any money and not being able to do many things,” he says. “I wanted to pay back what Rutgers gave me with interest.”
Today, his generous financial gifts include support of the Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College, where a room known as The Dougherty Study is dedicated in memory of his mother, Dorothy R. Urban, and his grandmother, Mary B. Robinson.
He also has given generously of his time. His extensive participation and volunteering include serving on many Rutgers committees, most notably the last six years on the Board of Governors, where he is vice chair, a position he will hold through the end of June. Dougherty previously served on the Board of Trustees from 2012–2020, where he served as chair and vice chair and was instrumental in establishing the Scarlet Promise Initiative, a foundational scholarship program at Rutgers that has raised millions and supported thousands of students.
He also serves or has served in various roles, including the Rutgers University–Camden Board of Directors, the Rutgers–New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences Advisory Council, and the School of Public Health Dean’s Leadership Council.
In addition to his support of Rutgers, he is a generous benefactor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, endowing the chair held by the first violinist and assistant concertmaster. He also funded the orchestra’s Pride Concert for the past two years.
A Champion of LGBTQ+
One of Dougherty’s key efforts has been to support inclusion and causes at Rutgers, including a $3 million gift in 2023 that established the Perry N. Halkitis Endowed Chair in LGBTQ+ Public Health. He has been an active supporter and volunteer for the Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College LGBTQ+ Learning Collaborative and the Tyler Clementi Center Advisory Board.
Dougherty spoke at the dedication of the university’s first Pride Bus.
In 2022, he funded the wrapping of the first Pride Bus, which featured a design celebrating more than 50 years of support for the LGBTQ+ community on the Rutgers–New Brunswick campus.
Dougherty says he was moved and troubled by the case of Clementi, a Rutgers student who took his own life in 2010. Dougherty has been a sponsor of a table including Honors leadership at the annual Tyler Clementi Foundation’s Upstander Legacy Celebration as well as a sponsor of an Upstander Legacy Lecture which brought Tyler Clementi’s mother to campus.
He also has regularly provided words of encouragement. “My advice to current LGBTQ+ students at Rutgers would be to listen to your ‘inner voice,’” he wrote in a blog post for Student Affairs. “Don’t worry about what you think others think of you. Be brave. You always have a family—even if they are not related to you.”
As for being inducted into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni, Dougherty says he was honored to learn the news.
“It just blew me away,” he says. “I never in a million years thought I would be in the Hall of Distinguished Alumni. When I looked at some of the past recipients, I didn’t think I was worthy of something like this, but I’m super proud and super happy about it.”
This article first appeared in Rutgers Today. Read more about the 2026 HDA Inductees.
