By Anne Levin
Amid the fallout from the December 29 layoffs at Rider University of 30 full-time faculty members, all of whom were offered the opportunity to return as adjuncts in the spring semester with a pay cut of more than 70 percent and no benefits, University President John Loyack is pressing ahead with the next phase of his plan to save the school from financial ruin.
As part of his commitment to transparency, Loyack sent an email to the Rider community on January 7 laying out the next phase of the “March to Sustainability” plan for the future.
“I am immediately initiating this new year a set of steps designed to transform how Rider is perceived in the New Jersey higher education marketplace and across our region and nation,” he wrote. “Our intent through this work is to establish a new Rider brand that honestly and confidently conveys the life-changing value of a Rider education. We must begin rolling out this new brand well in advance of the next admissions cycle that begins early this fall.”
Loyack, who took over as president of the Lawrence Township university from Gregory Dell Omo last July, wrote that information about upcoming campus forums and alumni webinars will be forthcoming. In the meantime, he has established two working groups — one to focus on marketing, and the other on academic programs, including building on the Westminster brand.
Previously located on a 22-acre site that is now the property of the Municipality of Princeton, Westminster Choir College has been a part of Rider since 1992. Dell Omo attempted unsuccessfully to sell the Princeton campus in 2017, ultimately relocating what remained of the school and its programs to the Rider campus in 2020. The municipality acquired the Princeton campus last April.
In a phone conversation, Loyack acknowledged that the layoffs were painful. “But now to a great extent, there’s a whole second wave of work that begins on how we’re starting to do things to enhance existing programs, and begin to work on new ones we have on the horizon,” he said.
The Westminster brand is a priority. “Westminster is one of those key critical first initiatives focused on how to enhance what we have,” he said. “It needs a bit of a revival. It is enormously traditional, which is beautiful. In some ways, it needs to be modernized with technology and integrated with other arts programs so we can enhance and utilize its great reputation across a broader sweep of the arts. We don’t have a construct yet, but there are a lot of great ideas from Westminster and other arts faculty on how to make it more experiential for students, and create a sort of Westminster for the 21st century.”
Loyack said that since he took over as president, he has met almost all of the Westminster and Rider arts faculty. “There’s a lot of pent up feeling about enrollment, and various needs. They all have different wants, desires, and connection points,” he said. “I think you’ll see the Westminster brand recognized more independently. While it is a part of our community, it is also an outstanding individual component of that community. It used to be that you couldn’t even get a Westminster T-shirt or anything else with that logo in the Rider bookstore. That has changed.”
Loyack’s email to the community notes that 40 percent of the students are first-generation college attendees. “There is no reason that Rider cannot become the experiential learning hub for first-generation college students in New Jersey,” he wrote. “With steps like expanding our co-op programs and establishing additional internships and community nonprofit partnerships, we can give Rider students even more hands-on learning opportunities.”
Last fall, Rider raised $2.1 million in just over a month for its Presidential Hope Fund, which will aid students who might fall short of tuition during their matriculation.
“It’s important to make sure the students have the resources to make it all the way through four years,” Loyack said. “We want to not just attract students, but retain them. We need to find ways to build on that, not to tear it down.”
While Rider no longer owns the former Westminster campus, Loyack hopes to retain a relationship to the Westminster Conservatory of Music, the community music school still located there.
“We want to better integrate it with our student experience,” he said. “We want to get our students more engaged with the kids in the Conservatory. That will be part of what we are, going forward, and how we rethink how we might utilize some of the faculty.”
The “resource realignment” resulting in the layoffs of faculty and some administrative and officer-level positions came from a survey of the campus community. “We had over 80 percent participation, and 72 percent of the campus supported moving forward,” Loyack said. “These are difficult decisions. For the campus to show that kind of support for those decisions tells you where their hearts and minds are. They wanted to make sure that Rider survives and thrives. And that’s been the sentiment I’ve run into since coming back from the holidays.”