By Bob Considine/The Star-Ledger
NEW BRUNSWICK — The Rutgers Board of Trustees and several professors voiced displeasure tonight with the proposed plan to combine Rutgers-Camden with Rowan University to form a single research institution that would bear Rowan’s name.
Sol Barer, chairman of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Advisory Committee that recommended the merger to Gov. Chris Christie, fielded terse questions from skeptical board members for about 40 minutes at the Rutgers Student Center in New Brunswick.
Barer stood by the committee’s recommendations and said a revamped Rowan would strengthen higher education in the southern part of the state, create a better model for federal funding and allow Rutgers to focus on going from a “very good school to a great school.”
The proposal was part of a broad reconfiguration of New Jersey’s higher education system, announced by Christie in September, that would result in Rutgers-New Brunswick picking up Robert Wood Johnson Medical School from UMDNJ in Newark.
Board member Jeanne M. Fox asked Barer if the committee had ever considered building upon what was already established at Rutgers-Camden to have “a high-quality research institution” that would be “cost effective and take less time.”
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