Rutgers Moves Towards Centralization

After about ten years under the federated system, the Rutgers administration determined that the New Brunswick campus had become “too fragmented,” particularly the major liberal arts departments, including the basic sciences, such as chemistry. Administrators proposed a major restructuring of the university to consolidate all liberal arts faculty into a Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which would control all majors and course offerings in all of the liberal arts disciplines. Departments would be consolidated and faculties would be located in one place on the New Brunswick campuses, no longer houses at the four or five federated college campuses.

This concept appeared that it could work for the liberal arts areas, but it became very obvious that it could not work for Cook. The Cook faculty and administration fought centralization vigorously. The Cook community was convinced that if Cook was included in the centralization plans, that Cook College would change very rapidly, and no longer exist as we knew it. It was argued that Cook was a professional school, and not a liberal arts school, and could not be effective or survive if placed under the liberal arts umbrella. After much discussion and bargaining, Cook emerged as a professional school, with offerings related to “People and their Environments,” and as a complete educational unit. Today it is a professional college within the university, unique in that it is a complete college unit, including:

• A faculty and administration.
• A student body.
• Its own requirements and academic majors.
• Cook students major in approved Cook programs, and a few major in Mason Gross programs.
• Student housing.
• A complete student life program.

In comparison, since centralization, Rutgers, Douglass, Livingston, and University Colleges are essentially colleges and campuses where students majoring in liberal arts live and are affiliated with the university. They do not have academic faculties, nor majors of their own - - these liberal arts majors are all part of and the responsibilities of the Faculty of Arts and Science of the university.