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Upsala College

Coordinates: 40°46′34″N 74°12′29″W / 40.776064°N 74.208146°W / 40.776064; -74.208146
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This article is about the defunct private college in New Jersey. For the Swedish university, see Uppsala University.

Upsala College
Latin: Collegii Upsaliensis
MottoVincit omnia veritas
Motto in English
Truth Conquers All
TypePrivate liberal arts college
Active1893 (1893)–May 31, 1995 (1995-05-31)
AffiliationEvangelical Lutheran Church in America
Location
East Orange
,
New Jersey
,
United States

40°46′34″N 74°12′29″W / 40.776064°N 74.208146°W / 40.776064; -74.208146
CampusUrban
NicknameVikings

Upsala College (UC) was a private college affiliated with the Swedish-American Augustana Synod (later the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and located in East Orange in Essex County, New Jersey in the United States, with an additional campus in Wantage Township. Upsala was founded in 1893 in Brooklyn, New York City, and moved to Kenilworth, and finally to East Orange in 1924. Despite a turnaround strategy that involved recruiting minority and international students, declining enrollment and financial difficulties forced the school to close in 1995.

History

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In its early years, Upsala College was invited to build its campus in Kenilworth, New Jersey (seen here, circa 1906) where it operated for 25 years before moving to East Orange in 1924.

Upsala College was founded at the 1893 annual meeting of the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod in North America, known as the Augustana Synod—a Lutheran church body with roots in the Swedish immigrant community.[a][1][2] The Augustana Synod placed emphasis on mission, ecumenism, and social service.[1] Meeting at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, the polity decided to open the college in Brooklyn, New York, in October 1893.[2]: p.122  The Synod chose a young minister, the Rev. Lars Herman Beck (1859–1935), as the college's first president. Beck, a Swedish immigrant to the United States, had received his Ph.D. from Yale University in the previous year and turned down a teaching position at Yale to assume the post at Upsala.[3]

The name Upsala was chosen to honor both the historic Uppsala University in Sweden and the Meeting of Uppsala.[b][2]: p.122–123  That 1593 meeting—exactly 300 years before the founding of Upsala College—firmly established Lutheran Orthodoxy in Sweden after the attempts by King John III to reintroduce Roman Catholic liturgy.[4]

On October 3, 1893, Upsala College opened in the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Church in Brooklyn. The first day, Beck began instruction with 16 students.[5]: p.10  By the end of the year, Upsala had 75 students. Early instruction had been in Swedish as the student body largely consisted of Scandinavian immigrants. In 1897, the college moved to Kenilworth, New Jersey (formerly "New Orange, New Jersey") when the "New Orange Industrial Association" offered the young school fourteen acres of land. Upsala erected its first building on the Kenilworth campus in 1899.[2]: p.122–123  The college granted its first Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degrees in 1905 to four students.[2]: p.123–124  By 1910, Upsala offered Bachelor of Arts in modern and classical languages, and Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees in Mathematics and Sciences, while offering a three-year college preparatory program, instruction in music for preparing "teachers of music, organist and choir leaders, and in general to afford its students a musical education", instruction in commerce and business to "train young men and women for a business career" and in stenography for students seeking "to fill positions as stenographers and private secretaries."[2]: p.124  While the college was identified by its connection with the Swedish Lutheran community, Upsala was the first college in New Jersey to admit women, and its student body welcomed students from many other nationalities and religions. In 1908, the student body consisted of "79 Swedes, 2 Finns, 1 Jew, 1 'American', 1 Chinese, 1 Korean, and 1 Persian."[5]: p.55 

The college moved to East Orange in 1924 after purchasing a 45-acre site in the city in the previous year.

In 1978, Wallace R. Wirths, a former Westinghouse Corporation executive, author, local newspaper columnist and radio commentator, donated a 229 acre tract of land in rural Wantage Township in Sussex County to the college for the construction of a second campus. Upsala did not erect any buildings on the property; the only building was a former barn that Wirths converted to offices and a lecture hall.[6] About 300 students were enrolled at the campus in 1992.[7] When the college closed and its assets were sold, the Wirths family bought back the land from the college for $75,000.[6]

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Upsala suffered from severe financial problems and declining enrollment.[7] The demographics of East Orange had changed in the aftermath of the 1967 Newark riots, becoming a city of largely minority residents; this resulted in it gaining a reputation as dangerous, leading to a decline in recruiting prospective students. The student body had decreased from approximately 1,400 students at its peak in 1969, to 475 by 1990. However, a turnaround strategy implemented by then-college president Robert E. Karsten resulted in the increase of the student body to 882 in 1992. This increase in students was due to the college changing its recruiting efforts to focus on minority and international students. By 1992, 35 percent of the student body was black or African American and 30 percent were international students. A major fundraising effort raised US$1,000,000 in the first six months of 1992, and a consortium of multiple lenders and Lutheran colleges provided the college with a US$4,000,000 loan.[7] The number of students later declined to 435 at the time of the college's closure.[8] The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools announced that as a result of a decline in academic standards and the school's ongoing financial problems, it would revoke the school's accreditation on May 31, 1995. The last class of approximately 200 graduated on May 14, 1995.[8] The school closed with approximately US$12,500,000 in debt and filed for bankruptcy the next month.[8][9] The school's ninth and last president, Paul V. DeLomba, a partner and project manager with the financial services and accountancy firm Price Waterhouse,[10] was hired by the board of trustees to close the college and dissolve its assets.[3]

After its closure, the college's East Orange campus was sold to the East Orange School District, which built a new high school on half of the site constituting the college's East Campus. Several of the college buildings (including Beck Hall, Puder Hall, Viking Memorial Hall (gymnasium) and College Center) were incorporated into the new public secondary school, East Orange Campus High School. During this time, the West Campus deteriorated and became blighted and its buildings were looted, vandalized, and one building was lost to arson.[11] The West Campus was slated for residential redevelopment by the city government and demolished in 2006.[12]

Upsala's campus radio station, WFMU, remains in operation; a nonprofit company known as Auricle Communications purchased WFMU's license shortly before Upsala was closed.

Roughly 60 percent of Upsala's library was sold to the newly established Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida. The university's first classes were held in August 1997. A German investor and nearby Fairleigh Dickinson University bought the remainder of the collection.[9]

Upsala student transcripts can be obtained from Felician University, which is also located in New Jersey.[13] The college records were given to Augustana College.[14]

Notable people

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Main article: List of Upsala College people

See also

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Notes and references

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Notes

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  1. ^ The Augustana Synod, which was known by several names over the years (as Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church, Augustana Lutheran Synod, Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod in North America and Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod in North America) was merged into the Lutheran Church in America in 1962, which merged in 1987 with the two other national Lutheran bodies (The American Lutheran Church and Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches) to in 1988 form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
  2. ^ Upsala is an historical variant spelling of Uppsala. The modern spelling featuring two p's replaced this historical spelling in the early of the twentieth century.

References

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  1. ^ a b Arden, G. Everett. Half a Million Swedes from Bonderud, Omar and Lutz, Charles. America's Lutherans (series). (Columbus Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1958).
  2. ^ a b c d e f Johnston, Lawrence Albert. The Augustana Synod : a brief review of its history, 1860–1910. (Rock Island, Illinois: Augustana Book Concern, 1910).
  3. ^ a b "Series I Presidential Papers" Archived January 15, 2015, at the Wayback Machine in the "Upsala College records, 1893–1995" Archived October 19, 2014, at the Wayback Machine held in the collection of the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center, Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois). Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  4. ^ "N.F." "Upsala, The Diet of" (article) in Jacobs, Henry Eyster Jacobs, and Haas, John Augustus William (Rev.). The Lutheran Cyclopedia. (New York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1899), 528–529.
  5. ^ a b Calman, Alvin R. Upsala College: The Early Years (New York: Vantage Press, 1983).
  6. ^ a b Strunsky, Steve (August 2, 1998). "IN BRIEF; Dream of a College Tinged With Sadness". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  7. ^ a b c Rothstein, Mervyn (September 21, 1992). "Against Odds, Revival For Troubled College". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  8. ^ a b c "IN BRIEF;The Doors Are Closed At Upsala College". The New York Times. June 4, 1995. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  9. ^ a b Goodnough, Abby (January 7, 1996). "ON CAMPUS;Sold Piece by Piece, Upsala College Vanishes". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  10. ^ Allen, David Grayson and McDermott, Kathleen. Accounting for Success: A History of Price Waterhouse in America, 1890–1990. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 1993), 268.
  11. ^ Walker, Steven. "East Orange fire officials blame arson for loss of old Upsala College building" in The Star-Ledger (March 31, 1998).
  12. ^ Dilworth, Kevin. "Upsala campus headed for new heights" (February 6, 2000), "2 get nod to put housing on old Upsala campus" (October 31, 2003), "College campus preps for new career Developers close on deal for 20-acres destined for housing mix" (March 18, 2005), and "Hallowed halls reduced to rubble in East Orange" (March 31, 2006) in The Star-Ledger.
  13. ^ "Upsala Transcripts". Retrieved July 3, 2022.
  14. ^ "Upsala College (East Orange, N.J.) records, 1893–1995". Retrieved July 3, 2022.

Other reading

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  • Swedes And Deeds: The Ups And Downs Of Upsala College; Schaad, Jacob, Jr.; {Meadville, PA: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., 2021
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