Drew University
Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey, United States. It has a wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three schools. While affiliated with the Methodist faith, Drew University does not impose any religious requirements on its students.
History
19th century
In 1866, railroad "robber baron" Daniel Drew approached church leaders during the Methodist Centenary Celebration with an offer to build, equip, and endow a theological seminary near New York City. Drew asked that his pastor, John McClintock, be appointed the seminary's first president. Instruction began under McClintock's direction as both president and professor of practical theology after the first students were admitted in 1867. Drew is the third-oldest of 13 Methodist seminaries affiliated with the United Methodist Church.Drew offered professional training for candidates to the ministry augmented by "an opportunity for a broad culture through the study of the humanities".
The seminary attracted a faculty that made influential contributions to Methodist theology and biblical scholarship, including James Strong, a professor of exegetical theology, who collaborated with McClintock on the ten-volume Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, and researched, compiled, and published Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible during his tenure at the seminary. Writings on early church theology and Christian practice were translated into Chinese for use by foreign missions.
20th century
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Drew Theological Seminary educated and trained hundreds of Methodist ministers. It began to expand its role with the addition of a course of study for women in 1920 when it established a "College of Missions". This course was renamed the "College of Religious Education and Missions" in 1929 but was short-lived.In 1928, Drew Theological Seminary accepted a gift of $1.5 million from brothers Arthur J. Baldwin and Leonard D. Baldwin to establish an undergraduate liberal arts college.
The Baldwins were successful attorneys who were raised on a farm in Cortland, New York. Both attended Cornell University. They established a law firm with former New Jersey governor John Griggs spanning "varied interests in lumbering, manufacturing, transportation, and other enterprises that ranged from owning the Grosvenor Hotel in New York City to Arthur's legal counseling for the rising McGraw-Hill publishing empire." The Baldwins became acquainted with the seminary's president, Ezra Squier Tipple, who "welcomed the brothers to his prominent New York City Methodist Church when they came to Manhattan." Leonard Baldwin became a trustee of the seminary in 1919. The donation originally consisted of $500,000 to build a college building, and $1,000,000 in the form of Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company stock. The Baldwins exchanged the stock for a cash gift in 1928.
In their modesty and in recognition of their sibling affection, the Baldwins asked that it be named "Brothers College." The theological seminary then changed its name to "Drew University" to reflect its expanded role. Brothers College, later renamed the "College of Liberal Arts", opened in 1928 with its first class of 12 students. Brothers College incorporated the women's program and became coeducational in 1942, when school officials recognized that the military draft and war effort would reduce the all-male student body. Drew offered admission to United States Navy personnel through the V-12 Navy College Training Program. It was one of 131 U.S. colleges and universities to take part in the program, which offered students a path to a naval officer's commission.
In 1912, Drew began offering graduate-level education. It expanded its graduate education programs, focusing on religious studies and establishing the Graduate School, a third of Drew's degree-granting entities, in 1955, under the leadership of the university's seventh president, Fred Holloway. Holloway also delivered on goals set during previous administrations, overseeing the renovation and rebuilding of the campus, including the Baldwin Gymnasium and several dormitories. Four years later, it expanded the curriculum into other areas of the humanities. The Graduate School was renamed the "Caspersen School of Graduate Studies" after a pledge of $5,000,000 in 1999 by financier Finn M. W. Caspersen and his wife Barbara Morris Caspersen.
With financial assistance from the Mellon Foundation, during the 1970s the college established a freshman seminar program that allows first-year students to participate, with faculty who also serve as their academic advisers, in intensive study of a topic of hopefully mutual interest. Interdisciplinary study became a focus of the curriculum, with the creation of majors in neuroscience and minors in such fields as American studies and museology, dance, and writing.
In 1984, psychology professors Philip Jensen and Richard Detweiler led an effort to provide a personal computer and application software to all incoming freshman, a program called the Computer Initiative. Drew was the first liberal arts college to have such a requirement. The Computer Initiative differentiated Drew from other liberal arts colleges, and continued until 2012, by which time most entering students had their own computers or wished to select their own model.
After serving two terms as New Jersey's 48th governor, Thomas Kean was appointed Drew's tenth president in 1990. He served for 15 years before retiring in 2005. As president, Kean raised Drew's profile, oversaw fundraising efforts that tripled its endowment, added new faculty in African, Asian, Russian, and Middle Eastern studies, significantly increased opportunities for students to study abroad, increased applications from prospective students, and committed more than $60 million to construction of new buildings and renovation of older buildings—principally residence halls.
21st century
After Kean retired, the trustees selected Robert Weisbuch, former president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, as Drew's 11th president. He served for seven years and stepped down in June 2012. Under Weisbuch's direction, Drew became SAT-optional. From 2006 to 2013, applicants were allowed to submit a graded high school essay instead of SAT or ACT scores.In 2013, the university reinstated the SAT as an admission requirement, and changed course two years later in 2015, making it optional once again.
MaryAnn Baenninger became the president of Drew University in July 2014 after serving 10 years as the president of the College of Saint Benedict. She succeeded Vivian A. Bull, a former economics professor and associate dean of the college at Drew and former president of Linfield College, who served as Drew's interim president from 2012 to 2014.
In 2015, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared by William Campbell, a research fellow at Drew University, for his work developing a drug that treats parasitic diseases.
Undergraduate tuition, room and board for the 2017–18 academic year was $62,000, making Drew among New Jersey's most expensive private universities. In September 2017, Drew announced that it was cutting the list price of its tuition for the 2018–19 school year by 20%, from $48,300 to $36,600, as part of an effort to make the school more appealing to prospective students who had been deterred by the sticker price, which had been one of the state's highest.
In May 2020, the university's board of trustees announced that Baenninger would step down at the conclusion of her contract on July 31, 2020. In July, the school's search committee announced the appointment of Thomas J. Schwarz as interim president, beginning on August 1. Schwarz served as president of Purchase College, SUNY, from 2002 to 2019 and was named President Emeritus of Purchase College shortly after he retired. On February 8, 2023, Drew announced the appointment of its 15th president, Hilary L. Link, former president of Allegheny College.
On January 12, 2026 the university announced the sale of Drew Forest, Zuck Arboretum, and Madison House to the Borough of Madison. Additionally, other lands adjacent to the main thoroughfare running along the campus, Madison Avenue, have been reserved for development by private contractors.
Campus
Drew University is in Madison, New Jersey, a borough about west of New York City. Known as "the Rose City" because of its rose-cultivating industry in the 19th century, Madison is an affluent commuter town in Morris County. It is connected to the state's northern section and Midtown Manhattan by NJ Transit's Morris & Essex Lines. The university hosts the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, an independent professional theatre company.The university sits on the former estate of William Gibbons, who owned the New York–New Jersey steamboat business that became famous from the Gibbons v. Ogden case, and who pieced together a estate in Madison in 1832. He named his holdings "The Forest", from which Drew got its nickname the "University in the Forest".
The following year, Gibbons commissioned the design and construction of a Greek Revival antebellum-style residence that was completed in 1836.
In 1867, financier and railroad tycoon Daniel Drew purchased Gibbons's estate from his descendants for $140,000. A devout Methodist, Drew donated the estate to the church to establish a Methodist theological seminary. The estate's mansion was renamed Mead Hall in honor of Drew's wife, Roxanna Mead.
Drew's academic buildings feature a mix of Greek Revival, Collegiate Gothic, and neoclassical architecture on a wooded campus in the middle of a bustling suburban town. The campus features the Drew Forest Preserve, an expanse restored by the planting of 1,100 native trees and shrubs by the university community and volunteer assistance from pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, a large and local employer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the New Jersey Audubon Society. The campus also features the Florence and Robert Zuck Arboretum, named for two botany faculty members, containing a mixture of native and non-native trees, plants, and two small glacial ponds supporting populations of turtles, goldfish, catfish, and muskrats, and birds, including migratory fowl such as Canada geese, ducks, and herons.
The preserve and arboretum both provide a natural laboratory for instruction in biology and life sciences and for research, and are also open to the public by appointment. According to the New Jersey chapter of the Audubon Society, the arboretum and forest preserve is "important for groundwater recharge and runoff reduction within the Passaic River watershed and the Buried Valley Aquifer System".