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, United States, with an additional campus in Wantage Township in Sussex County. 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

thumb|right|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. The Augustana Synod placed emphasis on mission, ecumenism, and social service.

The name Upsala was chosen to honor both the historic Uppsala University in Sweden and the Meeting of Uppsala.

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. 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. About 300 students were enrolled at the campus in 1992. 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. A turnaround strategy implemented by then-college president Robert E. Karsten in the early 1990s 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 in the first six months of 1992, and a consortium of multiple lenders and Lutheran colleges provided the college with a loan.

The college further cut faculty salaries by 40 percent, and on March 3, 1995, the college's trustees voted to close the college on May 31, 1995. The college had hoped that an infusion of cash from South Korean industrialist In Tae Kim would help it avoid closure, but the college's administration stated that South Korea's ban on exporting funds to nonprofit organizations prevented it from obtaining the money. The last class of approximately 200 graduated on May 14, 1995. The number of students was 435 at the time of the college's closure. was hired by the board of trustees to close the college and dissolve its assets. Several of the college's former buildings were incorporated into the new school. During this time, the western half of the campus deteriorated, became blighted and its buildings were looted and vandalized. The western half was slated for redevelopment by the city government in 1997 and demolished in summer 2005; a residential development of single-family homes, Woodlands at Upsala, was built on the site beginning in 2006 by developers The Alpert Group and the Applied Development Company.

Upsala's campus radio station, WFMU, remains in operation; a nonprofit company known as Auricle Communications, formed by station staff in 1992, purchased WFMU's license in 1994, one year before the college closed. WFMU continued to occupy space on the campus until 1998, when it purchased and moved to another building in Jersey City.

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.

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

Notable people

See also

  • List of colleges and universities in New Jersey
  • List of Lutheran colleges and universities in the United States

Notes and references

Notes

References

  • Upsala College Alumni Page
  • Bill Taebel's website on Upsala College
  • Upsala photographs on Flickr.com
  • I nya Uppsala. Bref från Carl Sundbeck (Swedish, "In New Uppsala. Letter from Carl Sundbeck"), article in the Swedish periodical Hvar 8 Dag, 3:36 (1902).
  • Website of former Upsala College radio station

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