In 2022, the Fielding Board of Trustees approved an affiliation agreement with Rowan Global Inc.(RGI), an affiliate of Rowan University, a culmination of four years of work on the partnership.

The U.S. higher education sector is rapidly changing. Some of these changes, such as increasing costs, demographic shifts, new occupational requirements, and changing accreditation regimes, have been long evident. Other trends, including changing student needs and demands, increasing access for non-traditional learners, racial reckoning on college campuses, the decline of public trust in higher education, the reduction of public funding, and the rise of online and for-profit institutions, have greatly influenced how institutions of higher learning operate.

Cognizant of these trends and their impacts on Fielding, the board of trustees and university leadership worked together to formulate a strategy for Fielding’s future: one that will present more opportunities and resources for our students and enable faculty to deliver a strong, high-quality educational experience across all our programs. To do this, the board determined that a partner, aligned with our mission and values, could be an avenue for growth.

The board identified the following four essential criteria to evaluate a potential partner:

1. Aligned mission: A focus on ecological and social justice and equity, with diverse and inclusive faculty, staff, and student body, in addition to curricula based on these values;

2. Stable financials: A financial position that demonstrates long-term security and/or growth;

3. Complementary offerings: A track record of offering high-quality scholarship, research, and practice through programs; and

4. Advanced resources: A record of investment in assets around teaching and learning that could strengthen Fielding’s existing student offerings and student and faculty support.

Fielding leadership interviewed several potential partners but were particularly interested when Rowan University initiated a conversation about Fielding becoming the first institution to join its newly-created entity: Rowan Global Inc. (RGI). RGI, which will be conducting business as Rowan Education Partners, was created with a twofold purpose: (1) serve as an umbrella organization for post-secondary institutions (the affiliates) with similar educational values and mission; and (2) provide a suite of centralized services and support to its affiliates through a collaborative-based model endowed with transparency, efficiency, and cost effectiveness.

It is expected that under such a network, institutions will be able to expand, diversify, and collaborate with each other, while preserving their individual historic core.

Rowan University, a regional comprehensive R-2 University in New Jersey, has an enrollment of over 20,000 and a faculty of approximately 1,700. It offers traditional academic programs, including 90 bachelor's, 48 master's, two professional, and eight doctoral degree programs at three campuses, including the main campus in Glassboro, NJ. Rowan is also one of only three universities in the nation with two medical schools granting MD and DO degrees.

Initial conversations highlighted a strong alignment with RGI’s mission, which stresses the importance of higher education to achieve a more socially just society. They also evaluated complementary academic sensibilities concerning the importance of advancing the social sciences in a variety of academic offerings. In addition to meeting previously identified and desired criteria for a partner, Rowan evinced additional qualities of importance to Fielding: a strong financial capacity; advanced capabilities in diversity, equity, and inclusion expertise; and technology assets.

With Fielding as the first university to enter the network, Rowan and Fielding leadership have agreed to work together to co-design the network to accomplish the following:

1. Use the financial strength and backing of Rowan to mutually design RGI as a network of independent but like-minded institutions that share services to create savings that are reinvested in essential academic programming to drive growth and achieve greater global impact.

2. Leverage the individual strengths of independent institutions so that collectively they become a more significant player in higher education with a greater array of programs. This enlargement will raise the potential of Rowan and its affiliated institutions (e.g., Fielding) to compete more successfully against larger institutions in the higher education market.

3. Expand the use of technology for Rowan and its affiliates (e.g., Fielding), diversifying means of reaching and better serving students.

4. Enhance the work environment of faculty so that they can become even better teachers and scholars, which will make RGI partner institutions more competitive in hiring new faculty and in retaining existing faculty.

Given the demographic trends in undergraduate education and the rising costs of graduate education, the Board was prescient in understanding that Fielding stands the best chance of fulfilling our mission through securing a partner to help us leverage our strengths to support students and faculty more fully.

Above all, Fielding is an institution that can continue to contribute to the ecosystem of higher education through our distinctive approach to adult learning graduate environments in the social sciences. The Board’s extra work and thinking has resulted in improving our capacities to provide an equitable and inclusive learning environment for all our students. This work will enable us to live into our vision and mission in new ways as we envision a future as part of a broader network with many institutional partners. The opportunities for our students and faculty are limited only by our imagination.

This partnership will begin to come to fruition in spring 2023. Please stay tuned for announcements about university town halls hosted by President Katrina S. Rogers, PhD, and RGI leadership.