BLOOMFIELD, N.J. — Bloomfield College, started in the mid-1800s by the Presbyterian Church as a school for German ministers immigrating to the United States, today proudly stands among the nation’s predominantly Black colleges. It’s a status the small private college did not seek and only fully embraced after a painful evolution marked by racial demographic changes in its target commuter population, race riots in its largest nearby city, a court fight with tenured professors and a conscientious decision to embrace diversity—the welfare of the school requiring it.
“I helped the college understand what it had become and that was kind of a sea change,” says Dr. John Noonan, a veteran educator recruited by Bloomfield as president in 1987. “I knew which way the country was moving. Colleges that didn’t aggressively recruit non-White students were going to become anachronistic. It was not that I came and brought something new. All I did was to help people understand why that was occurring.”
It was important to embrace diversity, says Noonan, who retired from his post in 2003, “because that’s who we were by the time I got there. African-American students saved the school,” he says, pointing to the steady enrollment of Black and other minorities that helped offset the loss of White students who began leaving Bloomfield en masse in the early 1970s.
For sure, the “sea change” is sustaining the tests of time. Bloomfield today claims to reflect American higher education for the 21st century while staying rooted in its core mission of providing access to students who would otherwise be turned away from college. It sees its mission as preparing students of all backgrounds to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. Also, it does not see itself in a competitive race with peer schools.
“We don’t have a board obsessed with prestige and performance goals,” says Bloomfield President Richard Levao, adding that the school has no interest in the “rankings treadmill.”
Levao says Bloomfield’s commitment to minority education might cost it popularity points at a time when private donors and lawmakers emphasize retention and graduation rates and schools are more selective in admissions to ensure those hurdles are cleared. Bloomfield’s six-year graduation rate is about 37 percent. That doesn’t mean industry yardsticks are not important at Bloomfield, says Levao, a veteran attorney who also served approximately 25 years as a member and chair of the Rutgers University boards of trustees and governors. It means retention and graduation rates are not the school’s sole measures of how well it prepares students for life in a diverse society.
“We have a small independent college and are unique in the degree to which we are committed to minority education,” Levao says. “We’re very honest. This is who we are.”
