page_title: Rider University
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Rider University / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Williamson Hall is the heart historic of Westminster Choir College's campus in Princeton, named after Ohioan founder of the institution John Finley Williamson.
context_page_description: Rider University is a private university in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. It consists of five academic units: the College of Business Administration, the College of Liberal Arts, Education and Sciences, the College of Continuing Studies, and Westminster Choir College. In addition to regional accreditation, the undergraduate and graduate programs in business are accredited by AACSB and the professional education graduate programs are accredited by NCATE.
context_section_description: The school was founded as Trenton Business College on October 1, 1865, by Henry Beadman Bryant and Henry D. Stratton, operators of the Bryant and Stratton chain of private business schools. The school was located in Temperance Hall at the corner of South Broad and Front Streets in Trenton, New Jersey. Andrew J Rider was appointed as its first president. President Rider owned 500 acres of cranberry bogs near Hammonton, New Jersey. According to tradition, this is why the school colors are cranberry and white.
  The school grew and periodically moved to larger quarters. In 1896 women were admitted. In 1896 the school was renamed Rider Business College. President Rider stepped down the following year.
  In 1920 the institution moved to East State Street in Trenton and officially became known as Rider College. In 1922 the New Jersey Board of Education granted Rider College permission to confer the degrees of Bachelor of Accounts and Bachelor of Commercial Science. In 1957 Rider Business College introduced liberal studies leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree.
  in 1959 Rider College moved its campus to a 283-acre suburban tract on Route 206 in Lawrence Township, N.J. On November 15, 1961, President Franklin F. Moore (a 1927 alumnus of the college) announced the gradual reorganization of the college into five separate schools, each headed by a dean who would report to the provost. The changes took effect with the 1962–63 academic year. The five schools included a new School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
  Rider College merged with nearby Westminster Choir College, located in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1991–92. The campus of Westminster became the Princeton campus of Rider College. On April 13, 1994, the college became Rider University. In 2007 President Mordechai Rozanski announced the creation of the School of Fine and Performing Arts to integrate the Lawrenceville and Princeton campuses and expand programming for the arts.
  Today, Rider's Lawrenceville campus is home to its College of Business Administration; College of Liberal Arts, Education, and Sciences; College of Continuing Studies, School of Education, and part of the Westminster College of the Arts, which is also located on the Princeton campus. In recent years President Rozanski announced new academic programs and new financial aid resources.
  On March 28, 2017 it was decided by the Board of Trustees that Rider would attempt to sell WCC to a new affiliate partner. A timeline of 12 months was established with hopes that a buyer would be found in the upcoming year.
  On July 1, 2019 it was announced that Beijing Kaiwen was withdrawing from the proposed purchase. This was followed by news that Rider would relocate Westminster's programs to the Rider campus in September 2020 and monetize the sale of Westminster's Princeton Campus. At Rider University's commencement exercises on August 29, 2019 Dell'Omo announced that the sale of the relocation of Westminster and the sale of Westminster's Princeton Campus would directly benefit Rider University's ongoing campus investments.
caption: Williamson Hall at Westminster Choir College
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