Founded on November 16, 1965, as
Somerset County College by resolution of the Somerset County Board
of Freeholders, the College was officially established April 5,
1966, by the appointment of a nine-member Board of Trustees.
Somerset County College opened its doors to 229 students on
September 12, 1968 at its temporary home: Green Brook High School.
In May of 1970, the first commencement was held for 75
graduates.
In July of 1968, the College found a permanent home with the
purchase of a 240-acre site in North Branch. With the first phase
of construction underway, an interim facility - the current Arts
Building - was built to house all College operations. In September
1973, students finally moved into new, permanent facilities that
included the current Hunterdon Hall and Somerset Hall buildings.
The second phase of construction was completed in1975, adding to
the complex a new College Center - including the cafeteria,
bookstore, Student Enrollment Center, Student Activities area - and
a Physical Education building featuring a full gymnasium, fitness
center and swimming pool. The campus continued to grow with the
opening in 1985 of a new library and 1,000-seat Theatre.
The College's major redefining moment came in November 1986, when
freeholders from Hunterdon and Somerset approved co-sponsorship of
the College. The first bi-county college in the state was
officially named "Raritan Valley Community College" in July
1987.
With the merger and new name, the College continued to
expand.March 1990 marked the official opening of the 100-seat
Planetarium. As part of the College's 25th anniversary celebration
in 1993, the library was named to honor founding trustee Evelyn
S.Field, and the Theatre was named for founding trustee Edward
Nash. In June 1993, a Child Care Center opened to serve the
children of RVCC students, faculty, staff and administrators. The
Center for Advanced Teaching and Technology, which opened in 1994,
brought multimedia resources into the classroom via fiber optics,
enabling RVCC to become the first community college in the state to
offer the new classroom technology. Four years later, the
state-of-the-art Conference Center opened, serving as a conduit to
bring the corporate and academic communities together. In
January1999 the college opened a satelite location in Franklin
Township, Somerset County. Franklin Center offers both credit and
professional development courses.
Recent additions to the College complex include the Institute for
Holocaust and Genocide Resource Center and the Paul Robeson
Institute for Ethics, Leadership and Social Justice. In September
2002, the Christine Todd Whitman Science Center opened. The
state-of-the-art facility houses the biology, biotechnology,
chemistry, physics and engineering laboratories, as well as a
lecture hall that provides interactive centers for teaching using
technology. An Academic Support Center opened in September 2005,
enabling students who need extra help in such areas as math,
writing or science to find everything they need in one centralized
location at the College. The 44,500 square-foot West Building, the
largest classroom building on campus, opened for classes in the
Fall 2007. The facility, which houses the Computer Science
Department's faculty offices and most of the department's classes,
contains 18 classrooms and a multimedia laboratory.
For more information About RVCC, click here.