Reaching 40: The Stockton Idea
Foundation Documents

 Foundation Documents

A Call to Action is one of the first New Jersey State documents to consider two new colleges in the State -- one in the North and one in the South. The booklet was widely distributed to the public. It represents a major study of New Jersey's higher education needs; it compares what the State was doing with neighboring colleges and describes the results of exporting students to much of the rest of the country. It states, unequivocally, that higher education in New Jersey is in a crisis and what needs to be done by New Jersey citizens to remedy the problem. As such, it is the earliest official document that envisions a college in the southern part of the State which, ultimately, became Stockton.

A Call to Action -- 1965

The Educational Policies Committee Report is the second Foundation Document. It dates from April, 1970. At this point, the first President had been appointed, the first VP for Academic Affairs had been hired and he was in the process of hiring four Founding Deans. The origin of the Committee is unknown though the presence of a member of the Board of Higher Education (Ruth Ford) suggests that it formed the Committee. The document describes in fairly precise detail what sort of college would be started, what its basic policies would be regarding students and faculty, what sort of major fields of study it would create and what its relationship to the wider community might be. As one can see, the Report is just that: a document representing the best thinking of a wide-variety of academicians and graduate students. It is an impressive document; the new college can easily be glimpsed on its pages.

 Educational Policies Committee Report -- April 1970

 The Academic Working Papers (AWP) are the most fundamental academic documents at the College. When the Founding Deans met in July of 1970, we were presented with an outline of possible AWP titles. Our immediate task was to flesh out those entities as soon as we could. For example, there was an AWP for each Division, for policies dealing with faculty, for policies dealing with students, grading, new courses, etc. Every academic aspect of college life was listed and we were to write specific definitions, policies, procedures and intellectual defenses for each topic. Over the first few years of the College's existence the AWPs were re-written frequently. Some of those revisions are included here because it is impossible now to find original versions. To understand the original College it is essential to understand the AWPs. It doesn't get more academically basic than these.

Perhaps the most philosophically important AWP is the first; it was written on Dec. 26, 1970 -- after all of the others had been finished. Its seventeen points are a profound vision of the new College; as such it certainly deserves study.

 Academic Working Papers -- December 1970 on

Contents AWP-1 AWP-2/A AWP-2/B
AWP-2/C
AWP-3
AWP-4 AWP-5 AWP-6 AWP-7 AWP-8 AWP-9
AWP-10 AWP-11 AWP-12 AWP-13 AWP-14 AWP-15
AWP-16 AWP-17 AWP-18 AWP-19/A AWP-19/B AWP-20
AWP-21 AWP-22 AWP-23 AWP-24 AWP-25 AWP-26
AWP-27 AWP-28 AWP-29 AWP-30 AWP-31  AWP-32
Appendix C          

The College Prospectus was intended for students as a way to explain the college in an attractive way. It had pictures, course descriptions and sample curricula as well as a statement of the mission. Like all such documents, it was designed to help students identify their expectations to see if they could be met by the College. This first Prospectus was the first College publication to use the I Ching designs.

Prospectus -- 1971

 The Fall Term Master Schedule is just that: it contain all of the courses with descriptions for the Fall (1972) and Winter (1973) terms. It also contains a form for registering, a list of faculty preceptors and a list of our abbreviations designating courses.

Fall Term Master Schedule -- 1972


Other Documents Associated with the Early Years