Illustra: Portrait of Rutgers (the State University of New Jersey)

A visual tribute to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, this book offers a snapshot in time of a university 235 years young. Images span the geographic scope of the University’s three campuses in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick, providing an armchair tour of one of America’s leading educational institutions.

This remarkable portrait of Rutgers—evocative, amusing, informative, and exuberant—is drawn from the narrative of three overlapping journeys. The longest spans nearly two and a half centuries and traces the University's evolution from a colonial college established to train young men for the ministry, to its land-grant designation in the mid-nineteenth century, to its current status as New Jersey's state university and a distinguished center for learning and research. The second journey is the quest for knowledge and achievement that faculty and students have shared since classes were first held in the mid-eighteenth century. Then, a single instructor and his handful of charges gathered to study in a former New Brunswick tavern. Today, a third journey travels the diverse paths of more than fifty thousand students and faculty each year, and starts on one of three major campuses throughout the state.  A visit to each of them as the seasons change in the course of an academic year completes this Rutgers album.

The primary photographers for this book are Alan Goldsmith, photographic services manager, and Nick Romanenko, university photographer, both award-winning members of the Department of University Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.