Rutgers a 'world-class university,' school president says at merger ceremony

After months of debate and planning, Rutgers University’s president said Monday that the time had come to celebrate, as its merger with most of the state’s medical and dental school propelled it into the top tier of the nation’s research institutions.

“The people of New Jersey finally have the world-class public university that they deserve,” Rutgers President Robert L. Barchi said at a midday ceremony at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, which is now a part of the university. “Rutgers is ready to deliver.”

It was a day for superlatives as officials celebrated the official start of the merger in which Rutgers is to grow to more than 65,000 students and 33 schools, including coveted medical and dental schools.

The merger, the subject of debate for at least a decade, was pushed through the Legislature and signed by Governor Christie last summer.

“There comes a time in our state when we have to stop talking and start doing,” Christie said at the ceremony. “The real gems of the UMDNJ system will shine even brighter in this new arrangement.”

Speakers credited Christie with having the political will to get the messy merger done – an accomplishment that eluded two of his predecessors.

Ceremonies also were held Monday at the former UMDNJ in Newark and at Rowan University in Glassboro, which the merger legislation elevated to a research institution. Rowan absorbed UNDNJ’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford.

The new Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences includes the medical school in Piscataway and the state medical and dental schools in Newark as well as several other institutes, schools and clinics that were part of UMDNJ in Newark and central New Jersey.

The combined institutions have research grants totaling over $700 million, Barchi said, but he added that the new Rutgers will prove to be more than the sum of its parts. The historic merger – the largest of its kind in the nation – will give Rutgers the “leverage,” he said, to join the ranks of the nation’s top ten research universities and enter into a host of public-private partnerships with the state’s large pharmaceutical industry.

Officials said it will take about two years to fully integrate the two universities, but they marveled at how much had been accomplished since the legislation was signed nearly a year ago.