By Michael Hill
Correspondent
His daughter described him as a right-wing conservative, but, Henry Rowan and his family foundation gave and still give liberally to a university that bears their name.
“Many engineering schools in the country already developed and I’m kind of thrilled of the idea of developing engineering education here in south Jersey,” Henry Rowan said.
In 1992, the Rowan’s $100 million donation was the largest private one ever to a public school. Rowan, an MIT graduate, focused on building an engineering program from the ground up. Glassboro State College took it a step further and changed its name to Rowan College of New Jersey. All that after a modest request for the business school.
“It was a simple request. A simple $1,500 request from a local businessman, ‘hey, do you want to be part of this scholarship program?'” Jos Cardona, Vice President for University Relations, said.
Rowan told Kent Manahan what he thought of the invitation.
“That didn’t have nearly the appeal to me of forming and founding a school of engineering there at Glassboro. So, in essence, they chose me rather than me choosing them,” he said.
The total now tops $125 million from the Rancocas New Jersey fortune Rowan amassed through Inductotherm Industries that was founded in 1954. The company says through Rowan’s leadership, its furnaces revolutionized melting, pouring and processing metal, making it safer, more productive and technologically advanced.
Henry and Betty Rowan built the first furnace in their Burlington County cellar. They met in Ridgewood in the seventh grade in the 1930s, stayed in touch through college, married in 1945 and had three children. Their two sons died of muscular dystrophy in their 20s. Their daughter, Virginia Rowan Smith, chairs the Inductotherm Corporation.
The Rowans shied away from high society, lived modestly but gave generously to the Girl and Boy Scouts and to a little South Jersey college that’s grown in size and stature because of them.
“We have students who can harness up and climb and take measurements on full-scale industrial equipment,” said Tony Lowman, the Dean of the Rowan College of Engineering. He started in the 90s and says Rowan’s donation has inspired others to invest in the school to produce engineers Rowan himself would have hired.
“He was involved in reshaping how engineers were taught,” Lowman said.
Dean Lowman worked with Rowan on plans to put up another piece of the engineering school that the state is paying for and he echoed what others have said about the industrialist.
“So down to Earth, so in touch with the problems of our profession and facing the field,” he said. “You honestly might have gotten the impression he was just one of the engineers around the company.”
The dean says engineering enrollment has ballooned and for every applicant it accepts it turns down ten.
“I’m really thankful for what his vision of an engineering program was and I’m happy that our school was able to provide what his goals were,” senior Brendon Rush said.
Rowan would visit the campus and check out what the engineering majors were designing and building.
“When the students would go up to him, they would see him as a rock star and would really be proud to shake his hand and it would just be incredible to see students of today recognize that,” Cardona said.
You can see impact and influence of Rowan on engineering here, but the university says it goes well beyond that.
“We went from a well-regarded state college to now a comprehensive research university. Not only a comprehensive research university, but one with two medical schools as well, now with new Ph.D. programs and other doctoral programs. So, the impact is well beyond engineering,” Cardona said.
The building of a new business school is another example of one of Rowan’s famous sayings, “…satisfaction has always been the enemy of progress.” What began as a 1923 teachers college, is teaching the world the how to multiply the benefits of Henry and Betty Rowan’s philanthropy.