Catalog Navigator : History of Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick

1929 - Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick (RBS) was founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1929 as the Seth Boyden School of Business. It opened its doors at 40 Rector Street in space shared with the New Jersey Law School and Dana College (now Rutgers School of Law-Newark and the Newark College of Arts and Sciences, respectively). The school originally offered one degree--a bachelor of science in business administration.

1930s and '40s - In 1934, the Seth Boyden School of Business became part of the newly formed University of Newark and was renamed the School of Business Administration. Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) accreditation, the hallmark of excellence in management education, was granted in 1941, and in 1946 the school and the other University of Newark colleges became part of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

1950s and '60s - RBS launched its master of business administration (M.B.A.) degree program in the fall of 1950, and a master's degree in public accounting--the first of its kind in the nation--in 1956. The graduate student population quickly exceeded the undergraduate, and the school, in a move that mirrored a trend in business education at the time, decided in 1961 to discontinue the undergraduate program and concentrate exclusively on graduate education. A new name--Graduate School of Management--reflected the change.

1970s - With its new focus, RBS continued to grow and innovate. The creation in 1970-71 of the interfunctional management program (now called Team Consulting)--an M.B.A. fieldwork course sequence in which teams of student-consultants work on real problems for real companies--was another first for higher education in the United States. By the program's 30th anniversary in 2001, more than 1,500 projects had been completed for some 700 organizations. It has been widely imitated by other business schools.

While the interfunctional management program catered predominantly to large, more established corporations, the school expanded its outreach to small companies and entrepreneurs with the establishment of the New Jersey Small Business Development Center (NJSBDC) in 1977. The center, a partnership between RBS, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and New Jersey Commerce, Economic Growth, and Tourism Commission, is the result of an act of Congress (Public Law 96-302) that called for the creation of a pilot network of state-based small business development centers. Headquartered in Newark, the NJSBDC offers counseling and training to help small business owners finance, manage, and market their companies. Today it has 11 full-service regional centers and 27 affiliate offices statewide, serving all 21 of New Jersey's counties.

In 1978, the Ph.D. program in management, administered by Rutgers and originally taught in conjunction with the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), was added to the curricula. Modeled on the structure of a traditional Ph.D. program, with prescribed core courses, elective courses, preliminary exams, dissertation, and final defense, it is now one of the nation's largest doctoral programs in management.

1980s - In 1980, RBS launched an executive M.B.A. (E.M.B.A.) program for middle-level managers who want to earn their degrees on a full-time basis while working full time. Meeting on alternating Fridays and Saturdays throughout the school year and in four "residency" weeks during 20 months, the carefully selected students study subjects at a higher level and more intensively than is possible in the regular M.B.A. courses. International executive M.B.A. programs in Asia followed a decade later. The international E.M.B.A. degree is currently offered in Beijing and Shanghai, China, as well as Singapore.

While undergraduate degrees in the broad functional areas of businesses had been available on Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus since 1934, Rutgers took the step toward having an official undergraduate program in New Brunswick in 1981 when it organized several departments into the School of Administrative Services under the Faculty of Professional Studies. In June 1984, the university's Board of Governors approved a reorganization of the School of Administrative Services into the School of Business-New Brunswick. The new school received final approval from the New Jersey Department of Higher Education in February 1986 and began operating on September 1 of that year. Its mission was "to provide a high quality, upper-division program of study for students wishing to pursue professional careers... [and] prepare the student for imaginative and responsible citizenship and leadership roles in business and society."

1990s - In Newark, undergraduate business education had been offered since the 1960s--not through a dedicated business school, but through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences-Newark and University College-Newark. That changed in 1993 when the university's Board of Governors created the Rutgers-Newark School of Management, an upper-division school (four-year program for students entering fall 2000 and beyond) with a mission "to offer contemporary programs...to students who are broadly educated in the liberal arts...to equip graduates to enter the workforce as skilled professionals...and lead rich lives appreciative of their cultural heritage."

At the same time, the Board of Governors merged the Departments of Business Administration and Accounting and the faculty of the Graduate School of Management to form the Faculty of Management (FOM). FOM was initially given responsibility for management education on the undergraduate level in Newark and on the graduate level in Newark and New Brunswick. In 1995, the School of Business-New Brunswick was also put under the auspices of the Faculty of Management.

2000s - In the fall of 2001, the FOM label was officially dropped in favor of Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, encompassing the undergraduate and graduate business programs offered on the Newark and New Brunswick campuses. A new state-of-the-art facility was opened at 1 Washington Park in fall 2009 that reflects today's modern business environment and technology. This $83 million facility in Newark is 20 minutes from Manhattan.

A new $85 million facility for Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick, supported by a generous gift of $10 million from an anonymous donor, opened on the Livingston campus to coincide with the start of the fall 2013 semester. 100 Rockafeller (known as 100 Rock) represents an expansion of Rutgers Business School's presence and reflects its growing importance in the larger university community. The building is among the university's most technological and the newest example of its commitment to renewable energy.

2010 to present - In 2011, Rutgers Business School expanded mentoring and diversity programs for undergraduate students. The Office of Career Management used the business school's strong relationships with corporate partners to connect students to internships and job opportunities leading to Rutgers M.B.A., ranking No. 1 in the nation for job placement in 2016 according to Bloomberg.

In 2015, Professor Lei Lei, who built Rutgers Business School's Department of Supply Chain Management into one of the nation's leading programs, became the first female dean. Under Lei's leadership, Rutgers Business School has become one of the top public business schools on the East Coast, established lifelong learning for alumni, and is preparing the next generation of students to reinvent themselves for the digital era.

Rutgers Business School is focused on program innovations, diversity excellence, and strategic corporate partnerships to become a national leader in student success via job placement and return-on-investment for a business degree. RBS continued to build momentum emerging from being the No. 1 business school in New Jersey (up to 2015) to the No. 1 public business school in the New York Tristate (NY/NJ/CT) (2016) to being recognized as the No. 1 public business school in the Northeast U.S. (2017, 2018) (Financial Times). RBS is now consistently in the top 15 for return-on-investment for a business degree in the nation (Poets & Quants, 2018, 2019, 2020).

Today, the school is educating more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students per academic year and growing at two main campuses in New Jersey: Newark and New Brunswick (Livingston campus) as well as satellite locations in Jersey City, Morristown, and Singapore. Steeped in academic excellence, with a distinguished faculty and a corps of over 45,000 successful alumni, RBS continues to be highly ranked by the Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, and the Wall Street Journal.