Rutgers University

Rutgers University (/ˈrʌtɡərz/ RUT-gərz), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College and was affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States, the second-oldest in New Jersey (after Princeton University), and one of nine colonial colleges that were chartered before the American Revolution.

In 1825, Queen's College was renamed Rutgers College in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers, whose substantial gift to the school had stabilized its finances during a period of uncertainty. For most of its existence, Rutgers was a private liberal arts college. It has evolved into a coeducational public research university since being designated the State University of New Jersey by the state's legislature in 1945 and 1956.

Rutgers has several distinct campuses. Since colonial times, Rutgers flagship campus and historic core has been located along College Avenue at the College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey as part of Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Rutgers University–New Brunswick consists of the landscaped campus of Douglass College, a women's college that was traditionally paired with Rutgers, the campus of Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, which includes the College Farm and Rutgers Gardens, as well as both the Busch and Livingston campuses in Piscataway. Apart from the main campus at New Brunswick, additional satellite campuses at Rutgers University–Newark, Rutgers University–Camden, and Rutgers Health complete the university's main footprint. The university has additional facilities throughout the state, including oceanographic research facilities at the Jersey Shore.

Rutgers is a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant university, as well as the largest university in the state. Instruction is offered by 9,000 faculty members in 175 academic departments to over 45,000 undergraduate students and more than 20,000 graduate and professional students. As of Fall 2023, Rutgers University enrolls over 69,000 students across its three campuses, making it one of the largest universities in the United States. The university is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and is a member of the Association of American Universities and the Universities Research Association.

Two decades after the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton University, was established in 1746 by the New Light Presbyterians, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, seeking autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs in the Thirteen Colonies, sought to establish a college to train those who wanted to become ministers within the Dutch Reformed Church in the colony, which developed into the Reformed Church in America.

Through several years of effort by Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691–1747) and Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (1736–1790), later the college's first president, Queen's College received its charter on November 10, 1766, from New Jersey's last royal governor, William Franklin (1730–1813), the son of Benjamin Franklin. The original charter established the college under the corporate name the trustees of Queen's College, in New-Jersey, named in honor of Queen Charlotte (1744–1818), and created both the college and the Queen's College Grammar School, intended to be a preparatory school affiliated and governed by the college. The Grammar School, today the private Rutgers Preparatory School, was a part of the college community until 1959. New Brunswick was chosen as the location over Hackensack because the New Brunswick Dutch had the support of the Anglican population, making the royal charter easier to obtain.

The original purpose of Queen's College was to "educate the youth in language, liberal, the divinity, and useful arts and sciences" and for the training of future ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church.

In 1771, the college admitted its first students, which included a single sophomore and a handful of first-year students taught by a lone instructor, and granted its first degree in 1774, to Matthew Leydt. Despite the religious nature of the early college, the first classes were held at a tavern called the Sign of the Red Lion. When the Revolutionary War broke out and taverns were suspected by the British as being hotbeds of rebel activity, the college abandoned the tavern and held classes in private homes.