(*Please note - this week's episode runs a full hour) When Rider University’s plans to sell Westminster Choir College to a Chinese company fell through earlier this year, Rider’s administration found itself back where it started nearly three years ago, when it first announced that it wanted to sell the choir college’s Princeton campus, its home for 87 years, and move its programs to the main campus in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Over the past several weeks, Rider has begun to release plans and rough sketches outlining projects to upgrade its chapel, merge Westminster’s library encompassing about 67,000 books and scores together with Rider’s library, expand dormitory space, create recital space and practice rooms and expanding Rider’s existing fine arts building, all at a cost of about $20 million and a timeline that envisions moving the programs over by the beginning of next fall, and final completion within the following year.
A Tempo this Saturday (10/19 at 7 pm) looks at these plans in an interview with Rider President Gregory Dell'Omo; Marshall Onofrio, Dean of the Westminster College of the Arts; and Michael Reca, Vice President for Facilities and University Operations. The program also includes comments from Constance Fee, president of the Westminster Foundation, and Joel Phillips, Westminster professor of music theory and composition and assistant grievance officer of the Rider Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
