New Jersey Institute of Technology

Founding and early years

The New Jersey Institute of Technology has a history dating back to the early Industrial Age.

Originally introduced from Essex County on 3-24-1880 and revised with input from the Newark Board of Trade in 1881, an act of the New Jersey State Legislature essentially drew up a contest to determine which municipality would become home to the state's urgently needed technical school. The challenge was straightforward: the state would stake "at least $3,000 and not more than $5,000" and the municipality that matched the state's investment would earn the right to establish the new school.

The Newark Board of Trade, working jointly with the Newark City Council, launched a feverish campaign to win the new school. Dozens of the city's industrialists, along with other private citizens, eager for a work force resource in their home town, threw their support behind the fund-raiser. By 1884, the collaboration of the public and private sectors produced success. Newark Technical School was ready to open its doors.

The first 88 students, mostly evening students, attended classes in a rented building at 21 West Park Street. Soon the facility became inadequate to house an expanding student body. To meet the needs of the growing school, a second fund-raiser—the institution's first capital campaign—was launched to support the construction of a dedicated building for Newark Technical School. In 1886, under the leadership of the school's dynamic first director, Dr. Charles A. Colton, the cornerstone was laid at the intersection of High Street and Summit Place for the three-story building later to be named Weston Hall, in honor of the institution's early benefactor. A laboratory building, later to be called Colton Hall, was added to the campus in 1911.

Becoming Newark College of Engineering

Dr. Allan R. Cullimore led the institution from 1920 to 1949, transforming Newark Technical School into Newark College of Engineering (name adopted in 1930). Campbell Hall was erected in 1925, but due to the Depression and World War II, only the former Newark Orphan Asylum, now Eberhardt Hall, was purchased and renovated by the college in the succeeding decades. Cullimore left an unpublished history of the institution dated 1955.

As of 1946, about 75% of the freshman class had served in the U. S. Armed Forces. Cullimore Hall was built in 1958 and two years later the old Weston Hall was razed and replaced with the current seven-story structure. Doctoral level programs were introduced and six years later, in 1966, an 18-acre (7.3 ha), four building expansion was completed.

Becoming New Jersey Institute of Technology

With the addition of the New Jersey School of Architecture in 1973, the institution had evolved into a technological university, emphasizing a broad range of graduate and undergraduate degrees and dedicated to significant research and public service. School administration, led by President William Hazell, Jr., felt that the name of the school should clearly communicate this dynamic evolution. After much discussion, it was decided to solicit the broadest possible range of suggestions for a new name. Alumni were invited to participate in a contest that could give an NCE graduate the honor of renaming their alma mater. The winning suggestion came from Joseph M. Anderson, who received his degree with the Class of 1925 in mechanical engineering.

All at NCE agreed that the name Anderson had suggested – New Jersey Institute of Technology – cogently emphasized the increasing scope of educational and research initiatives at a preeminent New Jersey university. The Board of Trustees approved the transition to the new name in September 1974, and Newark College of Engineering officially became New Jersey Institute of Technology on January 1, 1975. Anderson received the personal congratulations of President Hazell with an honorarium of $50 for his thoughtful and very appropriate suggestion. At that time, the Newark College of Engineering name was retained for NJIT's engineering school.

The establishment of a residential campus and the opening of NJIT's first dormitory (Redwood Hall) in 1979 began a period of steady growth that continues today under the Landscape Master Plan. Two new schools were established at the university during the 1980s, the College of Science and Liberal Arts in 1982 and the School of Industrial Management in 1988. The Albert Dorman Honors College was established in 1994, and the newest school, the College of Computing Sciences, was created in 2001.

Recent history

In 2003, the launch of the new Campus Center on the site of the former Hazell Hall centralized campus social events. Construction of a new Atrium, Bookstore, Information Desk, Dining Hall, computer lab, and new student organization offices continued into 2004. In 2005, a row of automobile chop shops adjacent to campus were demolished. In 2006, construction of a new off-campus residence hall by American Campus Communities commenced in the chop shops' prior location. The new hall which opened in 2007 is dubbed the University Centre. As of Fall 2013 there are 5 residence halls on campus: Redwood Hall, Cypress Hall, Oak Hall, Laurel Hall, and the Dorman Honors Residence, in addition to several Greek houses.

Robert A. Altenkirch was inaugurated as president on May 2, 2003 and retired in 2012. He succeeded Saul K. Fenster, who was named the university’s sixth president in 1978. On January 9, 2012, NJIT Trustees named Joel Bloom president.

Also in 2005, Eberhardt Hall was fully renovated and re-inaugurated as the Alumni Center and the symbolic front door to the university. Its restored tower was the logo of the former Newark College of Engineering and was designed by Kevin Boyajian and Scott Nelson. A rebranding campaign with the current slogan, "NJIT – New Jersey's Science and Technology University – The Edge in Knowledge", was launched to emphasize NJIT’s unique position as New Jersey's preeminent science-and-technology-focused research university.

Recently, the school has changed its accredited management school into an AACSB-accredited business school. The business school focuses on utilizing technology to serve business needs. The school benefits from its close location to New York City; the financial capital of the world. It is located 25 minutes from Wall Street. The school has also strong academic collaboration with Rutgers business school. NJIT has a tie-up with Heritage Institute of Technology for summer internships.

In 2009, the New Jersey School of Architecture was transformed into the College of Architecture and Design (CoAD). Within the college, the New Jersey School of Architecture continues, and it is joined by the newly established School of Art + Design.

In June 2010, NJIT officially completed its purchase of the old Central High School building which sits in between NJIT and Rutgers–Newark campus. With the completion of the purchase, Summit Street (from Warren Street to New Street) would be totally converted into a pedestrian walkway from a public street. The existing old 'Central High School' building is earmarked to be extensively renovated, preserved and used as classrooms as per the Campus Master Plan which includes tearing down of Kupfrian Hall to create more greenery.

Travel and Leisure's October 2013 issue named the university among America's ugliest college campuses, citing the 2013 Princeton Review survey which rated it as the least beautiful college campus in the country, and noting that the university "suffers from a mishmash of architectural styles" ranging from the "Gothic" Eberhardt Hall, a former orphans' asylum, to the "crematorium Modernism" Redwood residence hall.

The university awarded 2,242 degrees in 2014 including 1129 Bachelors, 1058 Masters, and 55 PhDs. Enrollment, currently at 11,335 is projected to reach 12,200 by 2020.

Admissions

The admission criteria consists of:

The average SAT score (math + verbal only) for enrolling freshmen in fall 2015 is 1212.4 (636.7 Math, 575.7 Verbal).

The average SAT score (math + verbal only) and GPA for enrolling freshmen in the Honors College in 2008 is 1323 and 3.65 respectively.

The minimum SAT score (math + verbal only) for enrolling freshmen in the accelerated BS/MD program – run in combined with New Jersey Medical School (Rutgers) – is 1400.

The male-to-female student ratio is about 3.2:1 and the student-to-faculty ratio is 18:1.

Newark College of Engineering (NCE)

One of the oldest and largest professional engineering schools in the United States, Newark College of Engineering offers 13 undergraduate degree programs, 16 master’s and 10 doctoral degree programs. Undergraduate enrollment is more than 2,500, and more than 1,100 are enrolled in graduate study. The 150-member faculty includes engineers and scholars who are widely recognized in their fields.

The college has been providing quality engineering education since 1919. An estimated one in four professional engineers in the State of New Jersey are NCE alumni. Furthermore, the more than 40,000 living NCE alumni work in virtually every region of the whole world, often as CEOs or presidents of large engineering companies. NCE alumni have been pioneers and leaders in such fields as aerospace, television, telecommunications, plastics, electronics and environmental engineering.

College of Science and Liberal Arts (CSLA)

The College of Science and Liberal Arts was formed in 1982. It was originally known as the Third College because it had been preceded by NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering and the New Jersey School of Architecture. In 1986 the name of the college was changed to the College of Science and Liberal Arts as a result of a more sharply defined mission and direction. Growing steadily ever since, CSLA has spawned two of NJIT’s six schools and colleges: Albert Dorman Honors College, which evolved out of the Honors Program that was founded in CSLA in 1985, and the College of Computing Sciences, which developed out of CSLA’s Computer and Information Science Department.

Today the college consists of six academic departments:

CSLA also houses:

College of Architecture and Design (CoAD)

The College of Architecture and Design houses the School of Architecture (SoA) and the School of Art and Design. The college offers undergraduate degrees in architecture, digital design, industrial design, and interior design as well as graduate degrees in architecture, infrastructure planning, and urban systems. The CoAD is the only college at NJIT to have its own designated library. The library contains only materials related to the majors offered in CoAD in the form of periodicals, reference materials, rare books, visual materials (i.e. architectural drawings, prints, postcards, maps, etc.), digital databases, and a materials library.

The college offers a pre-college summer program for high school students.

Ying Wu College of Computing Sciences

The Computer Science department, part of the Ying Wu College of Computing Sciences, is the largest at NJIT, comprising more than one fifth of the student population. It is also the largest computer science department among all research universities in the New York metropolitan area. The department offers a full range of degree programs in computer science (BA/BS, MS and PhD), in addition to emerging interdisciplinary programs: Telecommunication, (MS), Bioinformatics (BS/MS), and Computing and Business (BS/MS). The Bioinformatics degree is also available in a pre-med option.

Martin Tuchman School of Management (SOM)

The School of Management offers programs in finance, accounting, marketing, management information systems, international business, technological entrepreneurship, and corporate communications in conjunction with Rutgers University.

The School of Management was established in 1988 and was accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 1997.

In 2006 and 2007, the Princeton Review named NJIT among the "Nation's Best 282 Business Schools".

NJIT offers a Bachelor of Science program (four years, 124 credits), a Master of Science in management program (30 credits), and two Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs: One regular (48 credits; two years for full-time students, three or four years for part-time students) and the other an accelerated 18-month Executive MBA program for managers and professionals.

Albert Dorman Honors College

In 1985, NJIT established an Honors Program to encourage and challenge its brightest and most motivated students. Dr. Richard Sher, Professor of History and Associate Dean of the College of Science and Liberal Arts, was its first director. The approach taken was to stimulate students intellectually with a thorough and well-balanced education. Special activities, rigorous courses, lectures and a colloquium series made up the program.

The first twenty-eight Honors students began their studies in the Fall of 1985, growing to 160 in 1990. The first graduates had succeeded academically and obtained jobs in prominent corporations or had chosen to further their education by entering graduate training or schools of medicine or law.

Ms. Ruth Baker succeeded Dr. Sher as Director of the Honors Program in 1991. Under Ms. Baker's direction, and with the assistance of Dr. Dennis Donahue as Faculty Coordinator and Honors Advisor, she worked with President Saul K. Fenster, Dr. William Mech of the National Collegiate Honors Council, deans, and faculty to formulate the Honors College.

President Fenster engaged Albert Dorman, class of '45, in the development of NJIT's fifth college. Mr. Dorman's special interest and generous endowment helped to create the Albert Dorman Honors College in 1995. Mr. Dorman's endowment, along with other gifts, allowed the Honors College to attract a greater number of students, growing from 230 in 1995 to over 700 students today. Honors scholarships were created, and a strong educational foundation was fashioned.

Dr. Joel Bloom, Vice President for Academic & Student Services, was named the first Dean of the Honors College. Other changes included a stronger and more active Honors student council and additional staff to support student opportunities and activities including a greater variety of colloquium lectures, study trips, research activities, and publications. Since this time, the Honors College has seen major growth in the number of Honors and Honors-enhanced courses and in the number of research and other projects undertaken by its students. New programs, including accelerated programs in medicine, dentistry, optometry, physical therapy, and law, have added to the diversity of the offerings.

The Honors Residence Hall, a goal of the second Strategic Plan, was opened in September 2013. The new 2015–2020 Strategic Plan, created under the guidance of Dean Katia Passerini, emphasizes Academic Excellence through Learner-Centered Education, Leadership and Professional Development through Community Engagement, and High Visibility through Technological Outreach and Partnerships. The College’s first five-year Strategic Plan was adopted by the Board of Visitors in 2001, and a second plan in 2008. The first plan's enrollment goals having been met, the new plan emphasizes academic enhancements such as students' Individual Education Plans, innovative honors courses, dual majors and minors, increased student research, leadership programs, and international study.

In 2015, the Albert Dorman Honors College celebrated 20 years of excellence and looks forward to many more years of innovation, education, and leadership.

Research

The university is known foremost for its research capabilities in many fields, especially nanotechnology, solar-terrestrial physics, polymer science, and the development of a smart gun technology. The university research centers include the National Center for Transportation and Industrial Productivity and SmartCampus. The university hosts the Metro New York FIRST Robotics office. The university also hosts the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research which owns and operates the Big Bear Solar Observatory, the world's largest solar observatory, located in Big Bear Lake, California, and operates the Owens Valley Solar Array, near Bishop, California.

In the past, NJIT was home to the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center (CCCC), a premier research center for furthering the state of the art in Computer-mediated communication. The systems that resulted from this research are the Electronic Information Exchange System, as well as the continuations: The Electronic Information Exchange System 2 (EIES2), and the Tailorable Electronic Information Exchange System (TEIES). One of the foremost developments of EIES was that of the "Virtual Classroom", a term coined by Dr. Starr Roxanne Hiltz. This was the first e-learning platform in the world, and was unique in that it evolved onto an existing communications system, rather than having a system created specifically for it. Their missions completed, the CCCC and EIES were terminated in the mid-90s.

The university currently operates a Class-10 cleanroom and a Class-1000 cleanroom on campus for academic and research purposes including counter-bioterrorism research.

The university also maintains an advanced 67-node supercomputer cluster in its Mathematics Department for research purposes.

NJIT conducts cybersecurity research in a number of areas including cross-domain information sharing, data security and privacy, data mining for malware detection, geospatial information security, secure social networks, and secure cloud computing. The university is designated a National Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Defense Education through the 2020 academic year by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security.

Libraries and Archives Supporting Research NJIT’s Main Library, The Robert W. Van Houten Library, is located in the Central Avenue Building, a facility for quiet and group study, researching, and browsing print and online sources. Since 1997 the Van Houten Information Commons has housed 120 personal computers, printers. The Barbara and Leonard Littman Library for Architecture and Design is located in Weston Hall. It houses a core collection that includes print and electronic books, journals, maps, drawings, models, e-images, materials samples, and over 70,000 slides. Included among NJIT’s information resources are the University’s historical archive including items developed and manufactured by Edward Weston—scientist, prolific inventor, and a founding member of the board of trustees of the university. Dr. Weston's collection of artifacts and rare books is housed in the Van Houten Library and is available to scholars interested in the history of science and technology.

Athletics

NJIT sponsors 20 varsity sports teams including 3 club-level teams. NJIT's teams are called the Highlanders. The school colors are red and white with blue accent. Most NJIT teams compete at the NCAA-Division I level as members of the Atlantic Sun Conference (A-Sun). Before joining A-Sun NJIT was the only NCAA Division I basketball independent – having been left without a home when the 2010–13 NCAA conference realignment ended in the demise of the Great West Conference. All the other schools in the A-Sun conference are located in the Southeast.

Several NJIT teams have affiliations outside of A-Sun. Men's volleyball, and men's swimming and diving compete in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA), and the Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) respectively. The men's fencing team is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association (MACFA). Currently (2016), the woman's team is independent. The Lacrosse team (NCAA Division I) is independent.

On 6 December 2014 NJIT's basketball team, unranked and independent, made headlines on national sports reports when they defeated the nationally-ranked (#17) Michigan Wolverines.

The sports available at NJIT are:

Living on campus

About 80% of NJIT students commute to campus. The Residence Life community currently includes a little over 2,200 students.

There are five residence halls on the NJIT campus. Redwood Hall was the first constructed in 1978 followed by Cypress, Oak and Laurel halls. Each hall has a unique character with Cypress and Redwood being primarily freshman halls and Laurel and Oak designated upperclassmen halls. The Warren Street Village opened in the Fall 2013 semester, including housing in the Dorman Honors Residence and several Greek houses which together add space for nearly 600 students. The Dorman Honors Residence also houses the Albert Dorman Honors College and several dining facilities.

A new almost-on-campus resident hall completed in 2007 known as University Center (run by American Campus Communities) just beside the InfoTech building also accommodates students from NJIT and neighboring Rutgers–Newark, New Jersey Medical School (Rutgers), and Seton Hall University.

Food services on campus are provided by Gourmet Dining Services or GDS. Taco Bell, Spice Cafe, a salad shop (Leafs & Grains), coffee shop (Tech Café), sandwich shop (Part of Leafs & Grains) and a convenience store (The C-Store) are also all available on campus. GDS also operates The Highlander Club (also known as The Pub) on the third floor of the campus center. Here, students can order take-out food of different varieties such as burgers, wings, and personal pizzas. A special 21 and over section also offers alcohol for sale. There are also "grease" trucks, that are located on campus, which serve food.

On May 2, 2016, a 23-year-old student was shot and killed during a home-invasion robbery at a TKE frat house. Two suspects were arrested.

Noteworthy events on campus

Rankings

Notable alumni and faculty

Since its founding in 1881, NJIT has issued degrees to more than 77,000 graduates. NJIT alumni have gone on to pursue distinguished careers in many sectors.

Academics

Business

Military

Politics

Science and engineering

Entertainment

Sports

Sports Coaches

NJIT university presidents

NJIT professors and administrators

Professors and administrators at other universities

Abuse of power lawsuit

NJIT accused a dean and professor of abusing his power as dean, hiring a woman he lived with for a job and changing a business colleague’s grade from an "F" to an "A". The dean and professor denied the charges and filed a lawsuit in 2011 accusing NJIT of unfairly suspending him from his $175,400-a-year job after he fell out of favor with top school officials. In 2013, NJIT stripped tenure and fired the dean and professor.

Alumni association lawsuit

After NJIT cut ties with its alumni association in 2008 and started a new alumni organization, the former alumni association sued NJIT. NJIT spent $460,000 in legal fees defending the lawsuit filed by its former alumni association. The alumni clashed with NJIT administrators over money, the location of the association's offices, campus expansion plans and the role of the alumni organization at the school. NJIT eventually won the legal battle after 6 years of litigation.