The New York State Board of Regents has granted university status to Touro College. The college”™s board had voted to amend the charter to change the college”™s name to “Touro University.” Touro already had university status for its schools in California and Nevada.
Touro”™s New York state presence includes its New York Medical College (NYMC) and the Touro College of Dental Medicine, which is located on the NYMC campus in Valhalla.
Touro has approximately 19,200 students studying at 35 colleges in the U.S. and overseas in Jerusalem, Berlin and Moscow. The academic areas covered include medicine, law, dentistry, business, education, Jewish studies, and other health science areas and disciplines.
“Achieving university status is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication on the part of the entire Touro community,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, Touro”™s president. “This exciting announcement represents our commitment to academic excellence and growth through innovative programs and opportunities in higher education.“Touro said that the school will undergo university-wide rebranding, which will unify all its programs and schools under one Touro University umbrella. Touro also said that it continues working on its project to build a new 243,305-square-foot main campus at 3 Times Square in Manhattan. Touro plans to transform eight floors of the building into classrooms, science and technology labs, offices and event space, creating a state-of-the-art home for several of its schools and programs.
Touro opened in 1971 after having been founded by Dr. Bernard Lander, who served as its first president. The school was named after benefactor Judah Touro. Lander was an Orthodox rabbi in Baltimore who returned to his native New York in 1944. He taught at Hunter College and from 1954 to 1969 served as dean of Yeshiva University”™s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies before founding Touro. Following Lander”™s death at age 94 in 2010, Kadish was named president of Touro.
Touro reports there are a total of 2,236 faculty members at its various institutions and that its annual operating budget is $565 million. It describes its mission as being “to perpetuate and enrich the Jewish heritage, to enhance Jewish continuity, as well as to serve the general community in keeping with the historic Judaic commitment to intellectual inquiry and social justice.”
