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Campuses

Riverbend, the main campus

Nineteen thousand eight hundred students study at Riverbend, on the ground the university has occupied since its charter in 1871. Four of the eight colleges are based here.

Students crossing a tree-lined green in front of a brick building with a clock tower

The Riverbend campus

The campus the university started on

Riverbend is the oldest and largest of the three physical campuses, and for most of the university's history it was the only one. The land-grant charter of 1871 established a school here on the bluff above the river, and the street grid that surrounds the campus today was laid out around it rather than the other way round.

Four colleges are based at Riverbend: the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering & Computing, Pathify Business School and the School of Law & Public Policy. Between them they account for the large majority of the 140 undergraduate majors, and the campus houses most first- and second-year students under the residency requirement.

Riverbend is also where the university's public-facing life happens. Homecoming, Family Weekend, the Ellsworth Lecture and the Undergraduate Research Symposium all take place here, and the fall career fair fills the Hale Center arena each September.

The Riverbend campus in figures

  • 19,800

    Students

    Of 31,400 university-wide

  • 4

    Colleges and schools

    Arts & Sciences, Engineering & Computing, Business, Law & Public Policy

  • 1871

    Founded

    The original campus

  • 2

    Libraries

    Hollis Main and the interim library

  • 3

    Athletics venues

    Calderwood, Hale Center, Riverbend Aquatics

Buildings worth knowing on the Riverbend campus

  • Students working at long wooden tables with brass lamps in a galleried reading room

    Hollis Main Library

    The university's principal collection and the largest study space on any campus, open to all students regardless of where they are enrolled.

  • Single-story timber and glass building with benches and bike racks, ringed by fall foliage

    The old quad and the interim library

    The interim library opened on the old quad in August 2026 and carries the lending collection while the main building's east wing is out of service.

  • Empty arena with red seats tiered around a wooden basketball court and center scoreboard

    Calderwood Stadium and the Hale Center

    The stadium and the arena sit at the south edge of campus with the Riverbend Aquatics Center, and together they host the Herons' nineteen varsity teams.

Glass-fronted library lit from within at dusk, a person walking toward the entrance

Campus

A library opened on the old quad in August

The interim building took the lending collection and roughly a third of the study seats while work continues on the main library's east wing. It is the first new structure on the old quad in decades, and it is meant to come down again when the work finishes.

Read about campus life
Rows of recruiting booths on an arena floor with students walking between them

Careers

Four hundred employers filled the Hale Center

The fall career and internship fair drew more than 400 employers to the arena in August, the largest turnout the university has recorded. It runs again on September 25, and students from all three physical campuses and Pathify Online are eligible to attend.

Plan a visit

The four colleges based at Riverbend

  • College of Arts & Sciences

    Riverbend campus

    The largest of the eight colleges, covering the sciences, the humanities and the social sciences. Biology, Psychology, Economics and Data Science all sit here.

    Explore this college

  • College of Engineering & Computing

    Riverbend campus

    Civil, mechanical and environmental engineering alongside computer science and data science. Dr. Sung-min Park is dean.

    Explore this college

  • Pathify Business School

    Riverbend campus

    Undergraduate business administration and the M.B.A., with a shared core in economics and analytics taught jointly with Arts & Sciences.

    Explore this college

  • School of Law & Public Policy

    Riverbend campus

    The M.P.P. and the undergraduate environmental policy degree, and the home of the Ellsworth Lecture each October.

    Explore this college

Since 1871

How the Riverbend campus grew

The university opened in 1871 on a single block above the river, with four faculty and a land-grant mandate to teach agriculture, engineering and the practical arts to the state's residents. The original quad, now called the old quad, is the surviving fragment of that first campus.

Growth came in two bursts. The first followed the war, when enrolment roughly tripled and the campus pushed south towards what is now Calderwood Stadium. The second came with the research build-out of the 1970s and 1980s, which added the laboratory blocks on the east side and, eventually, Hollis Main Library.

Riverbend today holds 19,800 of the university's 31,400 students. It is no longer the whole university — Northgate opened in 1964 and Pathify Health followed — but it remains the campus most people mean when they say Pathify.

Read the university history
Historic sepia view of a horse and cart outside a Gothic stone quadrangle

Riverbend dates this fall

Fall classes begin
Fall Open House
Career fair, Hale Center
Family Weekend
Ellsworth Lecture, Morrow Auditorium
Homecoming
Undergraduate Research Symposium
Degree conferral

More about Riverbend and the other campuses

  • Campuses and maps

    All four campuses side by side, with enrolment and what each one does.

  • Northgate campus

    Arts, environment and social work, 6,400 students, thirty minutes north.

  • Campus Life

    Housing, dining, libraries and more than 340 student organizations.

  • Athletics

    The Herons, nineteen varsity teams and the three Riverbend venues.

  • Find a program

    All 24 named programs, filterable by degree, college and campus.

  • Visits and tours

    Tours run at all three physical campuses, including Fall Open House.