Livingston College’s Challenges at Age 21

By Eric Schwarz, LC’92, SCILS’92,’07

[Read more Livingston College Alumni Memories.]

In 1990, Livingston College faced a transition as W. Robert Jenkins left as college dean. (Walton R. Johnson would be the next dean, serving from 1990 to 1993.) In a Daily Targum article from May 4, 1990 [PDF], Dean Jenkins noted that some of the college’s achievements included coeducational residence halls, new academic departments such as anthropology, computer science and journalism, and a diverse student population. Ernest Lynton, the college’s dean from its planning stages until 1973, recently had been honored by the university, which renamed the North and South Towers residence halls on campus for him. (The college opened in 1969.)

Students and administrators in 1990 hoped to secure more development on campus, such as an expanded student center, fraternity and sorority housing, and a Kilmer Village residential and shopping complex. I chronicled these events and reflections as Livingston College correspondent for the Targum.

It would take another 20 years before some of the visions voiced in 1990 would come to fruition at Livingston.

A student center expansion was completed in 2010, enlarging the center from approximately 35,000 square feet to more than 61,000 square feet.

The Livingston apartment complex, the largest single project Rutgers has ever built, total 650,000 square feet, including 25,000 square feet of retail space, and opened in fall 2012. The mid-rise buildings provide apartment-style living space for 1,500 students along with retail on the first level. Read a fuller description of the 2012 housing and retail project [PDF file].

Other major projects (completed or under construction) are listed in the university’s Vision for Livingston Campus site; the site chronicles development on the campus far beyond what had been planned in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Eric Schwarz is a 1992 graduate of Livingston College and the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) at Rutgers University, where he majored in Journalism and Mass Media, and English. He also earned a Master of Library and Information Science degree from SCILS in 2007.