Rowan University

Rowan University

Former names	Glassboro Normal School (1923–37) New Jersey State Teachers College at Glassboro (1937 – 58) Glassboro State College (1958 – 92) Rowan College of New Jersey (1992 – 97)
Motto	Eruditio spes mundi
Motto in English	Education, hope of the world
Type	PublicResearch university
Established	1923
Endowment	$140.5 million
President	Ali A. Houshmand
Provost	James Newell
Academic staff	1,750
Administrative staff	1,806
Undergraduates	13,169
Postgraduates	2,078
Location	Glassboro, Camden, Stratford, New Jersey, U.S.
Campus	Suburban, about 200 acres (0.81 km2)
Radio Station	89.7 WGLS
Colors	Rowan Brown and Gold
Athletics	18 NCAA Division III-NJAC sports teams 37 intramural sports
Nickname	Profs
Mascot	Prof (Owl), "Whoo RU"
Website	Official website

Rowan University is a public research university in Glassboro, New Jersey, United States, with a satellite campus in Camden, New Jersey. The school was founded in 1923 as Glassboro Normal School on a twenty-five acre site donated by the town. The school became New Jersey State Teachers College at Glassboro in the 1930s, and Glassboro State College in 1958. Starting in the 1970s, it grew into a multi-purpose institution, adding programs in business, communications, and engineering.

It was renamed Rowan College of New Jersey in 1992, after engineer Henry Rowan and his wife Betty gave the school US$100 million, at the time the largest gift to a public college. It became Rowan University on 21 March 1997, when it won approval for university status from the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education. In the fall of 2012, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University opened in Camden; it was the first public medical school in New Jersey not associated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. It later acquired the School of Osteopathic Medicine on 1 July 2013 and became the second university in the United States to offer both an M.D. and a D.O. program.

In the early part of the 20th century, there was a shortage of properly trained teachers in the state of New Jersey. It was decided to build a two-year Normal school in the southern part of the state to counter the trend. Among the candidate towns, Glassboro became the location due in no small part to its easy access to passenger rail as well as its offer to donate 25 acres (100,000 square metres) of land to the state for the purpose of building the Normal school. The 1917 purchase price of the land was raised by the residents of the town ($7,000 at the time) and used to purchase a tract that belonged to the Whitney family, who owned the local glassworks during the 19th century.