NicknameScarlet Knights
Websitewww.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University with the state university.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , commonly referred to as Rutgers University, Rutgers, or RU, is an American public research university and the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey.
Originally chartered as Queen's College on November 10, 1766, Rutgers is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine "Colonial Colleges" chartered before the American Revolution.The college was renamed Rutgers College in 1825[10] in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830), a New York City landowner, philanthropist and former military officer, whose $5000 bond donation to the school allowed it to reopen after years of financial difficulty. For most of its existence, Rutgers was a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church and admitted only male students. The college expanded its role in research and instruction in agriculture, engineering, and science when it was named as the state's sole land-grant college in 1864 under the Morrill Act of 1862. It gained university status in 1924 with the introduction of graduate education and further expansion. However, Rutgers evolved into a coeducational public research university after being designated "The State University of New Jersey" by the New Jersey Legislature in laws enacted in 1945 and 1956. It is one of only two colonial colleges that later became public universities. Rutgers, however, remains something of a public-private hybrid, in particular retaining certain "private rights" against unilateral changes in its governance, name, and structure that the state might otherwise want to impose.
Rutgers has three campuses located throughout New Jersey: The New Brunswick campus in New Brunswick and adjacent Piscataway, the Newark campus and the Camden campus. The university has additional facilities elsewhere in New Jersey.
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.
The University is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and is a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation,[17] the Association of American Universities and the Universities Research Association.
History
Early 19th-century drawing of Old Queen's (1809), the oldest building on the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Colonial period
Two decades after the College of New Jersey (now known as Princeton University) was established in 1746 by the New Light Presbyterians, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, seeking autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs in the American colonies, sought to establish a college to train those who wanted to become ministers within the church. Through several years of effort by Rev. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691–1747) and Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (1736–1790), 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 (1730–1813), the illegitimate son of Founding Father 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 King George III's Queen consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818), 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. The location of New Brunswick was chosen over Hackensack because the New Brunswick Dutch had the support of the Anglican population as well, making the royal charter easier to obtain.
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. The college admitted its first students in 1771—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.