Rider University - History

History

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Henry B. Bryant and Henry D. Stratton, operators of a chain of business schools decided to open a school in New Jersey. On October 1, 1865, The Trenton Business College was established in Trenton, New Jersey, located in Temperance Hall at the corner of South Broad and Front Streets. Andrew Jackson Rider became its first president. President Rider was also known as a leading force in the cranberry industry, as he owned 500 acres of cranberry bogs near Hammonton, New Jersey. (One of the school colors is cranberry, incidentally.)

President Rider steered the business school through a period of growth, and the school continued to move to larger quarters. In 1896 women were admitted to the school. In 1897, the school was renamed The Rider Business College. President Rider stepped down the following year. In 1957 Rider introduced liberal studies leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree. The institution officially became known as Rider College upon its move to East State Street in Trenton in 1921, and the following year the New Jersey Board of Education granted Rider College permission to confer the degrees of Bachelor of Accounts and Bachelor of Commercial Science. Gradually growing in size and scope through the first half of the 20th century, Rider began its move to a more spacious, suburban campus in 1959, when the first offices and classes moved to a 280-acre tract of land on Route 206 in Lawrence Township, N.J. in the minutes of the Board of Trustees’ meeting from November 15, 1961. President Franklin F. Moore ’27 made it known that night to the Board that Rider College would be reorganized to include five separate schools, each with a dean who would report to the provost, beginning with the 1962-63 academic year. Among these five schools would be an entirely new academic unit: the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Rider College affiliated with nearby Westminster Choir College located in Princeton, New Jersey in 1991 and merged with it in 1992. In 1994 Rider College became Rider University when it officially received university status on April 13, 1994. In 2007 President Rozanski announced the creation of the School of Fine and Performing Arts to integrate the Lawrenceville and Princeton campuses and expand programming for the arts. Today, Rider’s Lawrenceville campus is home to its College of Business Administration; College of Liberal Arts, Education, and Sciences; College of Continuing Studies, School of Education, and part of the Westminster College of the Arts, which is also located on the Princeton campus. In recent years President Rozanski announced new academic programs and new financial aid resources that will help students be able to afford to attend Rider.