Turning 40, RU @ Camden Has Grown Up and Out

Since 1969 Rowan University has been a boon to the City of Camden, and vice versa.

As RU at Camden turns 40, however, the campus is really coming into its own.

Of greatest significance to the campus, Rowan University and the entire community, an all-new Medical School will open here in conjunction with Cooper University Hospital beginning in 2013, New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine announced this summer.

“This wonderful development will benefit Rowan, Cooper and all of South Jersey,” Rowan President Donald J. Farish said recently. “We are proud to have earned Gov. Corzine’s and Cooper’s confidence and look forward to helping build on the hospital’s reputation as among the best in the nation.”

Officially named Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, the partnership is the latest big news for the growing Camden campus.

The campus, which since the 1980s has drawn about 500 students per semester, is on track to triple attendance and will soon offer courses, majors and degrees that are available nowhere else in South Jersey.

To help facilitate growth the University has purchased a vacant 19th-Century bank building cattycorner to its main Camden branch at Broadway and Cooper that it’s converting into classroom space. The nearly 40,000 square-foot bank building, constructed in 1928, features a cavernous main section, multi-level annex and massive vault on the first floor that may become a hip student lounge.

Dr. Tyrone McCombs, Assistant Provost and Dean of the Camden campus, said the 40th anniversary just happens to coincide with a very exciting period of growth on campus – all of it tied to the renewal of the city itself.

“Everything we do is somehow linked to the City of Camden,” Dr. McCombs said.

RU at Camden offers undergraduate degree programs in elementary education, law and justice and sociology but the elementary education degree is changing to focus on urban education, particularly in the teaching of math and science.

A new doctoral cohort will be offered this fall so the university’s Ed. D. in Educational Leadership may be taken completely in Camden through a hybrid on-campus, on-line program.

All of the curricula changes are designed to provide greater opportunities, particularly within the city, Dr. McCombs said.

“We’ve had a long-standing partnership with the Camden school system,” he said. “In the fall we’ll primarily have faculty and administrators from the Camden school system enrolled in the new doctoral cohort.”

The changing undergraduate education major also reflects a commitment to serving Camden and other urban and semi-urban areas like Bridgeton, Vineland and Atlantic City.

“It will be geared toward examining the kinds of issues and trends faced by urban school districts,” Dr. McCombs said. “Through this program we hope to prepare students to go out into districts where they can readily find a job teaching math and science.”

Dr. McCombs said the restructured degree will be offered as a dual major – elementary education and math/science. It will be unique to RU at Camden not just within the University but throughout southern New Jersey, he said.

The campus has a long-established English as a Second Language program as well as programs geared specifically toward assisting Camden city educators. There is also a very popular preschool facility and there could soon be a residency incentive to encourage faculty to buy homes and live in Camden, Dr. McCombs said.

“The bottom line is, we want people, when they think of Rowan, to think of Glassboro and Camden,” he said.

A focus on learning

A tour of the campus reveals a beehive of activity. Students gather between classes in hallways, chat in stairwells, and research or surf the Web in three computer labs.

“The campus is relatively small so all the students, faculty and staff know each other,” said writing arts professor Dr. Sandra Smith. “What I admire most about these students is they have so much drive. They really appreciate the education they’re getting here.”

Jay Tran, an academic counselor for the Equal Opportunity Fund program on campus, said despite accounting for only 1/20th of the general Rowan population, Camden students qualify for and receive about 1/10th the number of academic scholarships Rowan provides each year.

“It’s very impressive,” Tran said. “The students work hard here. And it shows.”