The Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology concept is approved by the New Jersey Department of Higher Education to be located at Rutgers University. GSAPP is the first university-based professional psychology school in the nation providing training for the Doctor of Psychology degree. Tenured full-time faculty include: Drs. Jack Bardon, Virginia Bennett, W. Donald Clark, Cyril Franks, Sandra Harris, Arnold Lazarus, Stanley Messer, Peter Nathan, and Terry Wilson.

GSAPP was created to broaden and deepen the skills of master’s level psychologists who were working in New Jersey’s institutions and agencies and to meet the increasing need for well-trained psychologists who were working in New Jersey and beyond. The program was designed to train students who could to become practitioners in communities—professional psychologists who could integrate scientific knowledge with innovation in the delivery of psychological services. 

-- from Realizing the Vision, sponsored by the GSAPP Alumni Organization and published by GSAPP in 2008 on the occasion of GSAPP's 30th anniversary.