Stockton University

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Stockton University sits in the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, on 1,600 acres of woodland in Galloway Township. A public university named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence, it has spent much of its life wrestling with a question its own founders left unanswered: why did they choose that particular name? That mystery threads through more than five decades of growth, controversy, architectural ambition, and athletic achievement. To understand Stockton University is to understand a school that opened in a hotel, bought a golf resort and a shuttered casino, and built an entirely new campus on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

• 2. A Name Without a Reason

  ›

  New Jersey voters approved a $202.5 million capital construction bond in November 1968, with $15 million earmarked specifically for a new state college in Southern New Jersey. The trustees who would build that college spent considerable energy choosing what to call it. Their shortlist ran through names like "Southern Jersey State College," "South Jersey State College," "Atlantic State College," and "Jersey Shore State College" before they settled on "South Jersey State College." That name did not last long. Confusion with Rutgers College of South Jersey pushed them back to the drawing board. The trustees then turned to a list of New Jersey's five signatories of the Declaration of Independence: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, and Abraham Clark. They chose Stockton. Why they chose Stockton over the other four was never recorded, and the school launched a formal investigation into the question in 2017 without ever finding an answer. The mystery is compounded by what Stockton himself did during the American Revolution. He was the only signer imprisoned and starved by the British, and he obtained his release by swearing an oath to King George III and resigning from Congress. The task force that examined the name question in 2020 noted that the student and faculty bodies were evenly split on whether to keep the name, with Stockton carrying what the report called the "contentious accusation of being a traitor." University president Harvey Kesselman gave his answer plainly in an interview with WPGG on the 7th of April 2023: there would be no name change.

• 3. Opening in a Hotel

  ›

  Construction on the Galloway Township campus began to fall behind schedule in 1970. The first class was already committed to arrive in 1971, so the trustees needed a solution fast. They landed on the historic Mayflower Hotel in Atlantic City, which served as the temporary campus for that inaugural class. The school formally became Stockton State College, and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools granted accreditation in December 1975. The name changed to Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in 1993. University status came later: on the 18th of February 2015, after the New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education approved the petition, the institution became Stockton University. By then, the school's relationship with Atlantic City had long since grown into something more permanent than a hotel lease.

• 4. Green by Design

  ›

  The original linear campus earned a place on New Jersey Monthly's list of the state's ten architectural treasures in April 1999. Architect Robert Geddes of Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham Architects designed it in an International modernist style, with generous glass openings to the surrounding Pinelands. Later, Michael Graves designed the Arts and Sciences Building, completed between 1991 and 1996, in a Post-Modernist style with organic colors. Environmental ambition has been just as distinctive as the architecture. Stockton installed a 200 kW fuel cell in 2002, which provides just under ten percent of the campus's total energy. The university holds the lowest energy cost per student among New Jersey universities. A borehole thermal energy storage system went in in 1994, collecting waste heat from air conditioning equipment and using it to heat the older half of campus. Then in 2008, Stockton became home to the first aquifer thermal energy storage system of its kind in the United States. The ATES stores the chill of winter air in the water and rock of an underground aquifer, then draws that stored cold out during summer to cool newer buildings. The Campus Center, completed in 2011, was designed to the LEED Gold Standard and uses twenty-five percent less energy and forty percent less water than standard construction. In 2013, Stockton received approval from the New Jersey Pinelands Commission to administer the state's first comprehensive forest management plan on public land, actively managing more than 1,500 acres of forest.

• 5. Atlantic City Gambles

  ›

  Stockton's expansion into Atlantic City has been dramatic, and not always smooth. In December 2014, the university purchased the shuttered Showboat Atlantic City hotel and casino for $18 million, with plans to convert it into a residential campus. The plan collapsed when it emerged that Trump Entertainment Resorts held a covenant on the property that prevented it from being used as anything other than a casino. University president Saatkamp faced criticism for proceeding with the purchase despite knowing about the covenant. Stockton eventually sold the Showboat to Bart Blatstein in January 2016. The university's Atlantic City ambitions did not end there. In September 2010, Stockton purchased the Seaview Resort and Golf Course for $20 million as part of its hospitality management program, then sold it on the 31st of July 2018 to KDG Capital LLC of Florida for $21,070,000. The Atlantic City campus that finally materialized opened in the fall of 2018 in the Chelsea neighborhood, funded in part by $50.4 million in bonds from the Atlantic County Improvement Authority from proceeds of nearly $70 million in tax credits issued by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. The $220-million campus included a three-story academic center and an apartment-style student residence called Kesselman Hall, accommodating more than 500 residential students and more than 1,800 students taking courses. In 2023, Stockton added Parkview Hall, a 133,055-square-foot building with 107 apartments capable of housing 416 students.

• 6. Ospreys and Champions

  ›

  Stockton's athletics teams carry the nickname the Ospreys, competing in the New Jersey Athletic Conference across most sports and in the Coastal Lacrosse Conference for men's lacrosse. Two Olympic gold medalists once served as athletic director: Don Bragg, who won the pole vault at the 1960 Games, and G. Larry James, who won gold in the 4x400 relay and silver in the 400 meters at the 1968 Games. James later spent 28 years as athletic director, and the university named its track and soccer facility the G. Larry James Stadium in 2007. Men's basketball coach Gerry Matthews retired before the 2016-2017 season as the winningest college basketball coach in New Jersey history; the court now bears his name. The men's basketball team reached the NCAA Division III Final Four in 1987 and again in 2009. The men's soccer team won the NCAA Division III national championship in 2001, with coach Jeff Haines named Division III Coach of the Year. Paul Lewis won the NCAA Division III 400-meter dash in 1981, and the university has produced nine individual national champions in track and field overall. Stockton alumna Laurel Hester was a local police officer whose story became the subject of the Academy Award-winning short documentary Freeheld in 2007 and a feature film of the same name in 2015.

• 7. Faculty, Arts, and Scholarship

  ›

  Stephen Dunn, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Different Hours. Carol Rittner, a Distinguished Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, co-produced the Academy Award-nominated film The Courage to Care and spoke at the United Nations twice in 2014 on genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust. David Lester, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, is one of the world's leading suicidologists, with over 2,300 publications. The campus Art Gallery has been running since 1973 and moved into a dedicated exhibition space in January 2012. In 2010, Stockton entered a partnership with the Noyes Museum, eventually absorbing the museum entirely between 2016 and 2017; the original Absecon site was sold and exhibits now appear at Stockton's Kramer Hall in Hammonton and at the Noyes Arts Garage in Atlantic City. The student-run FM radio station WLFR 91.7, known as Lake Fred Radio, has been licensed to Stockton since 1984, and in 2025, U.S. News and World Report ranked Stockton 84th among public colleges and universities nationally, and placed it among the top 40 national universities for social mobility.