Stockton University growing swiftly

At 44 years old, Stockton University is experiencing a growth spurt.

The school, known until last week as Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, has broken enrollment records four years in a row, expanded its geographic footprint into Ocean and Cape May Counties, and opened a slew of graduate programs.

By fall, a new campus at the former Showboat Casino will fully open in Atlantic City and house Stockton's hospitality program and provide space for dance, music, and theater programs.

"The demand is here for us. It really is. But we'll do it in a very planned and careful way," Stockton president Herman Saatkamp said in a recent interview.

School officials spent two years considering an upgrade to university status before petitioning the state last fall. On Wednesday, the campus celebrated becoming Stockton University.

A formal strategic plan lays out the school's future, and Saatkamp readily rattles off developments to be completed three, five, 10 years into the future. Large diagrams in a conference room near his office show how Stockton's main campus in Galloway will be built out over the next five years: a new science building, a parking garage, and the conversion of its massive campus center parking lot into a grassy quad.

But some of the most important developments have occurred outside of the main campus nestled in the Pine Barrens. Satellite campuses opened in recent years in Hammonton, Woodbine, and Manahawkin give Stockton greater reach, and the Stockton Seaview Hotel & Golf Club houses students and gives real-world experience for its hospitality programs.

And then there's the Showboat purchase, which will create an "Island Campus" in Atlantic City for several thousand students. Saatkamp said creating a large Atlantic City campus had been his goal since his arrival in June 2003; buying the Showboat was his seventh attempt to create a campus, he said.

"I am persistent, is a way of putting it," Saatkamp said.

In two recent interviews, Saatkamp said he wanted to continue growing student enrollment and building new spaces to accommodate them, but he largely demurred from setting hard goals. Why limit himself?

"It's not as if we're without opportunities for growth, development, and the like," Saatkamp said. "The real difficulty is choosing which ones to follow up on."

One driver of that opportunity: New Jersey's long-term "brain drain" of students resulting from an imbalance between the number of high school graduates and available space at colleges in-state. New Jersey is a notorious exporter of students, sending more than 30,000 high school graduates out of state each year.

"We lose all that talent, and they go to other universities. So part of our task is to provide high-quality education in-state," Saatkamp said. "And part of the difficulty we're having is we're doing that, and so lots more people are coming, and we're running out of space."

Stockton has about 8,500 students. As more students apply, Saatkamp hopes to keep overall enrollment growth at 2 to 3 percent each year. He thinks the main campus in Galloway ultimately will hold 9,000 to 9,500 students, while the Atlantic City campus will host an additional 4,000 to 6,000.

But Saatkamp doesn't necessarily want to stop there - "if we're able to acquire more property, build and add programs, and things of that nature," he said, citing Stockton's satellite campuses. "Those all offer opportunities for considerable growth."

As it grows, Stockton can help boost the regional economy, Saatkamp said. State and local leaders have lauded the Showboat purchase as a boon for struggling Atlantic City.

While colleges generally serve as economic engines, that role is particularly important to South Jersey, where the only other four-year schools are Rutgers-Camden and Rowan University.

"That region of the state continues to grow and need higher education, and Stockton is filling that consumer demand for sure," said Michael W. Klein, the head of the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities. "Stockton is filling not just student demand for higher education and the individual aspirations of students, but it's going to serve the state and really help, being part of the revitalization of Atlantic City, providing exactly what the state's going to need."

The first Stockton classes were held in Atlantic City, with the school using the Mayflower Hotel in 1971 while the campus was under construction. Harvey Kesselman, Stockton's provost, who was in that inaugural class, laughed during an interview last week while describing the school's Showboat purchase:

"We're basically now going to establish, over time, a branch campus pretty much where we were born, where we first began," he said. "So there's great irony in returning to Atlantic City, having begun in Atlantic City back in 1971."

The homecoming comes amid an "extraordinary" growth in academic programs, Kesselman said, with Stockton now offering 14 graduate programs and preparing to introduce a 15th.

Stockton's growth helped fuel the decision to seek state designation as a university, Kesselman said. Stockton is now recognized as a comprehensive university, keeping its focus on teaching; other public universities in the state include Kean and Montclair State. New Jersey's three public research universities - Rutgers, Rowan, and New Jersey Institute of Technology - place an added emphasis on published research.

"It doesn't really matter the title - of 'university' or 'college' - we can still keep the focus on quality education," Saatkamp said.

Faculty members are required to teach undergraduates at all levels, not only senior- and graduate-level courses, and Stockton limits class sizes to keep student-faculty ratios low.

Which explains Saatkamp's focus on controlled growth: More students means more faculty and staff, and space to fit them all. That takes momentum, not forced acceleration.

"There has been just steady and incremental growth," said Kesselman, the provost. "This year's success builds upon the previous year's success. The university status is really more of a validation of who we are and who we've become."