Kean University history

The first graduating class in 1859 had seven men and ten women.

In 1863 the Normal School students became formally required to teach in Newark Public Schools after graduation.

Captain John Kean was the son of Katharine Winthrop Kean and United States Senator Hamilton Fish Kean whose library was housed at Kean Hall, a building constructed for that specific purpose in 1912.

In 1913 the state took control of the college and the School was renamed the New Jersey State Normal School at Newark.

In 1917, during World War I, the Normal School faculty and students worked in war-related fundraising and relief efforts.

In 1934 a great milestone was reached when the Normal School became a four-year college and the State Board of Education authorized the Normal School to grant bachelor's degrees – Bachelor of Science in education.

By 1937 the school was now known as New Jersey State Teachers College at Newark or more commonly Newark State Teachers College.

The purchase of the Kean Estate in Union Township, then called the "Green Lane Farm", allowed for a new campus in 1958 at the site of the Kean family's ancestral home at Liberty Hall.

President Eugene Wilkins retired in 1969, following the successful transition of the college from Newark to Union and the successful inaugural years of Newark State College.

The Holocaust Resource Center, established in 1982, collects and disseminates information regarding the Holocaust.

“The Paintings of William Henry Mount,” Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages (formerly The Museums at Stony Brook), Stony Brook, NY. Spring 1994.

By the time Kean College of New Jersey became a university in 1997, under President Ronald L. Applbaum, the institution had achieved a higher level of academic and public recognition.

In 2003, Dawood Farahi was elected president of Kean University by the unanimous vote of the board of trustees.

An assistant professor of Latin American history at Kean University, Frank Argote-Freyre received his Ph.D from Rutgers University in 2004.

His first book, Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman was published in 2006.

“Still Life.” Education About Asia 13.1 (Spring 2008): 61-62. (With Sue Gronewold)

Peace: Its Conditions and Conceptions, Editor, Faculty Seminar E-Book Series, volume on the Faculty Seminar Roundtable Kean University, held on 6 April 2009.

Faculty reacted negatively to the plan, including a 2010 vote of "no confidence." One year later, the university's president, Dawood Farahi came under scrutiny from the Kean Federation of Teachers leadership who accused him of multiple errors on his resumes.

The following year, in April 2012, the NCAA accused the university of "major violations" and placed all of its sports teams on probation.

She also served as editor and contributor to A Cultural History of Gardens in the Renaissance, 1400-1650 in the series The Cultural History of Gardens (Bloomsbury, 2013).

In 2014, he worked with the New Jersey Historical Commission to plan activities for the 350th Anniversary of New Jersey.

“Ashes, Ashes: Artists' Reactions to the Holocaust: Drawings by Jo Jochnowitz, Poems by Susanna Rich,” The James Howe Gallery, Kean University, 4 November – 22 December 2015.

Her chapter on the modern history of sex work in Shanghai was published in 2017 in their Brill Press book, Selling Sex in World Cities 1600 to the Present.

An outgrowth of this work, Staring out to Sea: Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey's Forgotten Shore, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press in 2019.