To the NJIT Community

It is my great pleasure to share with you some incredibly exciting news. This afternoon, following NJIT’s 2019 undergraduate commencement ceremony, we announced the largest ever gift to our university in its distinguished history. That gift from internationally renowned architects Robert and Barbara Hillier will support NJIT’s College of Architecture and Design and will be celebrated through the renaming of the College as the J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier College of Architecture and Design.

The Hilliers are icons in the world of architecture, and their involvement with and support of NJIT have been extensive over the course of many years.

They are co-founders and principals of Studio Hillier LLC, an interdisciplinary design firm located in Princeton, NJ. Studio Hillier has received more than 300 state, national and international design awards and counts the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., the 5 million square-foot Sprint world headquarters outside Kansas City, the Glaxo Smith Kline world hedquarters in London and the Sydney Harbour Casino in Australia among its many notable commissions.

During the 1990s, the Hilliers’ firm, then known as The Hillier Group, redesigned the architecture school at NJIT – a project that garnered a Chapter Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Mr. Hillier, along with his late father, James Hillier, a leading scientist for RCA and then the Sarnoff Corporation who helped invent the electron microscope, is a recipient of an honorary degree from NJIT. Robert also received the NJIT President’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2009 and the AIA’s Michael Graves Lifetime Achievement Medal in 2007. He was named New Jersey’s Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine in 1989. As a member of the core faculty at Princeton University’s School of Architecture, he has lectured extensively throughout the United States at schools of architecture and to AIA chapters. Mr. Hillier is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Foundation at NJIT, and has served on the Board of Visitors of the university’s Albert Dorman Honors College since its founding. Mrs. Hillier has received many honors for her architectural work, including numerous AIA awards and the distinguished Chicago Athenaeum American Prize for Architecture. She has lectured and served on design juries at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and Temple University, among other academic institutions. Her work has been featured in such prestigious publications as The New York Times, Architecture + Design and Metropolis.

Their gift will have a transformative effect on NJIT’s students, faculty and research within the areas of architecture and design. We are in the midst of a pivotal moment for the fields of architecture and design, as new technologies – together with new economic and ecological realities – have changed the ways in which we think about, understand, interact with, and develop the built environment and designed spaces. Thanks to this historic gift, the J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier College of Architecture and Design will have the resources to not simply to remain ahead of the curve, but to define what that curve is.

The Hilliers’ generosity will provide more scholarship support for our hardworking and high-achieving students; will enable us to offer more high-impact educational experiences, both inside and outside the classroom; will allow NJIT to attract, retain, and support our faculty, instructors, and practitioners; will expand and enhance our already-innovative curricula; and will support the physical and virtual spaces in which our students learn, work, and create.

Please take a moment to watch this short video in which the Hilliers and others share their sentiments about this momentous occasion, and join me in thanking Bob and Barbara for their incredible generosity toward and devotion to NJIT.

Joel S. Bloom
President
New Jersey Institute of Technology