Camden Campus Tour

Well within the city limits of Camden, N.J.,  Rowan’s Camden campus’ sole building stands on North Broadway amongst the other universities.

Inside the building lies a completely different world from the boisterous crowds roaming Camden. Void of the city sounds and smells, the structure is a community at its heart. In the entrance of the building on the left sat four girls, Maria Brito, Katherine Rivas, Chaiana Santana Urena and Jessica Ramos. The four were selling cookies and beverages for a dollar each at a table decorated with a Rowan banner.

“They’re members of the Alliance of the United Cultures Club,” said Ivelisse Silva, the Assistant Director and the Counselor of the Educational Opportunity Fund Program.””It’s the only club on the Camden campus.”

The club members were raising money for a former student whose two-year-old child was shot by the child’s father before he took his own life. Though tragic, the story is an example of how the small campus is like a community. The campus is not like the main campus in Glassboro. Instead of running through dozens of buildings, there is only one building that is five stories high and shared with Camden County College, the community college in the area.

The first story of the building has a cafeteria and the preschool for the children of students and faculty. The preschool is located on the right of the entrance. There were three or four readers during a visit on Monday, Nov. 2, and around 20 children that were enrolled in the preschool. The room was bright and colorful, leading to an outdoor playground directly outside the classroom’s large windows. The cafeteria, located on the first floor as well, is clean but simple, similar in style to a high school cafeteria.

The second floor of the building holds the administrators’ and counselors’ offices. The third floor belongs to the Camden County College.

The fourth floor and the fifth floor are dedicated to classrooms and computer labs. On the fifth floor, there was a student’s lounge that had four or five students studying in it. The windows were huge and arched, complete with a great view of the city.

The windows going down the stairs are as huge as the ones in the lounge and arched at the top in the same fashion, highlighting the view of a large American flag in the courtyard. On the top floor, one set of stairs lead down to a platform in which you could take the right or left staircase. It leads to the fourth floor in which it then became one staircase again, and so on. The building has a definite character.

The campus is a much smaller setting than the main campus in Glassboro. While some disadvantages exist, there is a positive to taking classes on the campus.

“Since the classes are smaller, you get more interaction with your professors,” said Jonathan Santiago, a senior economics major that attends classes at the Camden campus. “When you’re at the main campus, sometimes it’s harder because it’s a bigger class. Usually a lot of students ask questions and there isn’t enough time for them to all ask questions. Here, there are smaller classes so you have more of a chance to ask the question.”

Beyond the student-professor relationship, having a smaller campus makes a place to learn in which the student body can get to know the counselors better, allowing for more guidance throughout their academic career.

“It’s such a small campus that it’s sort of like a family environment,” Silva said. “Everybody knows each other, everybody helps each other. We counselors are very interested, in a good way. We get more face-to-face interaction with the students.”

Due to this family environment, the population of the campus at large feels closer and more ready to help one another. Professors go beyond the call of duty of their lesson plans and have the opportunity to reach out to students when they feel they are needed.

“Professors will come down, sometimes, if students are having any difficulties and ask for our help,” Silva said. “Glassboro is so big that it doesn’t allow for that kind of teamwork to take place.”

The Camden campus can be a great resource for the students of the main campus when a class they want to take may be full. Students that don’t have transportation can still take advantage of a free shuttle bus that travels between the Glassboro and Camden campuses multiple times a day.

“Sometimes certain courses get full on the Glassboro campus and it’s good to know that we have courses here and that we have a shuttle bus that transports students back and forth,” Silva said. “That’s another option for the students from the Glassboro campus.”
A schedule of the shuttle bus can be found in the student center by the information desk or on Rowan Univeristy’s Web site, on the Rowan at Camden’s main page listed as “Camden-Glassboro Shuttle.”