Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University or simply Rutgers, is a large public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States, the second-oldest in New Jersey, and one of nine colonial colleges that were chartered before the American Revolution.
In 1825, Queen's College was renamed Rutgers College in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers, whose substantial gift to the school had stabilized its finances during a period of uncertainty. From its founding to the mid 20th century, Rutgers was a private liberal arts college. It has evolved into a major public research university since being designated the State University of New Jersey by the state's legislature in 1945 and 1956.
Rutgers has several distinct campuses. Since colonial times, Rutgers' historic core has been located along College Avenue at the College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey as part of Rutgers University–New Brunswick, which includes the College Avenue Campus, as well as Douglass campus, Cook campus, both primarily in the city New Brunswick, and both the Busch and Livingston campuses on the north side of the Raritan River in Piscataway, as well as many buildings throughout downtown New Brunswick. Two other major campuses are located at Rutgers University–Newark, and Rutgers University–Camden. The university has additional facilities located throughout the state, including oceanographic research facilities at the Jersey Shore.
Rutgers is a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant university, as well as the largest university in the state. Instruction is offered by 9,000 faculty members in 175 academic departments to over 45,000 undergraduate students and more than 20,000 graduate and professional students. As of Fall 2023, Rutgers University enrolls over 69,000 students across its three campuses, making it one of the largest universities in the United States. The university is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and is a member of the Association of American Universities and the Universities Research Association.
History
18th century
Two decades after the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, was established in 1746 by the New Light Presbyterians, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, seeking autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs in the Thirteen Colonies, sought to establish a college to train those who wanted to become ministers within the Dutch Reformed Church in the colony. This religious organization developed into the Reformed Church in America.File:Rutgers University Crest.svg|thumb|left|The university's coat of arms, featuring four quarters, a reference to the shields of the House of Orange-Nassau and Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, later the college's first president, Queen's College received its charter on November 10, 1766, from New Jersey's last royal governor, William Franklin, the son of Benjamin Franklin. The original charter established the college under the corporate name the trustees of Queen's College, in New-Jersey, named in honor of Queen Charlotte, and created both the college and the Queen's College Grammar School, intended to be a preparatory school affiliated and governed by the college. The Grammar School, today the private Rutgers Preparatory School, was a part of the college community until 1959. New Brunswick was chosen as the location over Hackensack because the New Brunswick Dutch had the support of the Anglican population, making the royal charter easier to obtain.
File:Old Queens, New Brunswick, NJ - looking north, 2014.jpg|thumb|Old Queens, the oldest building at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, built between 1809 and 1825; Old Queens houses much of the Rutgers University administration.
The original purpose of Queen's College was to "educate the youth in language, liberal, the divinity, and useful arts and sciences" and for the training of future ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church.
In 1771, the college admitted its first students, which included a single sophomore and a handful of first-year students taught by a lone instructor, and granted its first degree in 1774, to Matthew Leydt. Despite the religious nature of the early college, the first classes were held at a tavern called the Sign of the Red Lion. When the Revolutionary War broke out and taverns were suspected by the British as being hotbeds of rebel activity, the college abandoned the tavern and held classes in private homes.
Like many colleges founded in the U.S. during this time, Rutgers benefited from slave labor and funds derived from purchasing and selling enslaved people. Research undertaken at the university in the 2010s began to uncover and document these connections, including the university's foundation on land taken from the indigenous Lenape people.
19th century
In its early years, due to a lack of funds, Queen's College was closed for two extended periods. Early trustees considered merging the college with the College of New Jersey, in Princeton, but the measure failed by one vote. They later considered relocating it to New York City. In 1808, after raising $12,000, the college temporarily reopened and broke ground on a building of its own, called "Old Queens", designed by architect John McComb Jr. The college's third president, Ira Condict, laid the cornerstone on April 27, 1809. Shortly after, the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, founded in 1784, relocated from Brooklyn, to New Brunswick, and shared facilities with Queen's College and the Queen's College Grammar School, and all three institutions were then overseen by the Reformed Church in America. During those formative years, all three institutions fit into Old Queens. In 1830, Queen's College Grammar School moved across the street, and in 1856, the seminary relocated to a seven-acre tract less than one-half mile away.After several years of closure resulting from an economic depression after the War of 1812, Queen's College reopened in 1825 and was renamed "Rutgers College" in honor of American Revolutionary War hero Henry Rutgers. According to the board of trustees, Colonel Rutgers was honored because he epitomized Christian ethics. A year after the school was renamed, it received two donations from its namesake: a $200 bell still hanging from the cupola of Old Queen's and a $5,000 bond which placed the college on sound financial footing.
Rutgers College became the land-grant college of New Jersey in 1864 under the Morrill Act of 1862, resulting in the establishment of the Rutgers Scientific School, featuring departments of agriculture, engineering, and chemistry. The Rutgers Scientific School would expand over the years to grow into the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and divide into the College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture. Rutgers created the New Jersey College for Women in 1918, and the School of Education in 1924.
20th century
With the development of graduate education, and the continued expansion of the institution, the collection of schools became Rutgers University in 1924. Rutgers College continued as a liberal arts college within the university. Later, University College was founded to serve part-time, commuting students and Livingston College was created by the Rutgers Trustees, ensuring that the interests of ethnically diverse New Jersey students were met.Rutgers was designated the state university of New Jersey by acts of the New Jersey Legislature in 1945 and 1956. Although Rutgers thus became a public university, it still retains—as the successor to the private college founded and chartered in 1766—some private rights and protections regarding its fundamental character and mission.
The newly-designated state university absorbed the University of Newark in 1946 and then the College of South Jersey and South Jersey Law School in 1950. These two institutions became Rutgers University–Newark and Rutgers University–Camden, respectively. On September 10, 1970, the board of governors voted to admit women into Rutgers College.
File:Rutgers University statue and tree in April College Campus.JPG|thumb|left|On the western end of Voorhees Mall is a bronze statue of William the Silent, commemorating the university's Dutch heritage.
There were setbacks in the growth of the university. In 1967, the Rutgers Physics Department had a Centers of Excellence Grant from the NSF which allowed the physics department to hire several faculty each year. These faculty were to be paid by the grant for three years, but after that time any faculty hired with the associate or full professor designation would become tenured. The governor and the chancellor forced Rutgers to lose this grant by rejecting the condition that tenure be granted.
In 1970, the newly formed Rutgers Medical School hired major faculty members from other institutions. In 1971, the governor's office separated Rutgers Medical School from Rutgers University and made it part of New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry, and many faculty left the medical school, including the dean of the medical school, Dewitt Stetten, who later became the director of the National Institutes of Health. As a result of the separation of the medical school from Rutgers University, Ph.D. programs that had been started in the medical center were lost, and students had to seek other institutions to finish their degrees. After the dissolution of the University of Medicine and Dentistry in 2013, the medical school [|again became] part of the university.
Before 1982, separate liberal arts faculties existed in the several separate "residential colleges" at Rutgers–New Brunswick.
In 1982, under president Edward J. Bloustein, the liberal arts faculties of these five institutions were centralized into one college, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which itself had no students. The separate residential colleges persisted for students, and while instructors for classes were now drawn from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, separate standards for admission, good standing, and graduation continued for students, depending on which residential college they were enrolled in. In January 1987, around 2,800 non-teaching employees went on strike for increased salaries, which ended after nine days after an agreement with the administration was made.