Robbie Rosen writes Hofstra alma mater

Long after many of today’s songs are forgotten, people will still be singing Robbie Rosen’s lyrics.

“Blue and Gold,” a song the 21-year-old Merokean and Hofstra University junior wrote last fall, is set to echo in Hofstra halls for generations to come as the school’s new official alma mater. It topped submissions from Rosen’s peers, faculty members and alumni in a university-wide contest.

The song almost did not come to be. Rosen didn’t enter the contest until Nathalie Robinson, associate professor and coordinator of music education degree programs at Hofstra, asked him to take a stab at it. She knew him as a talented singer-songwriter with a proven ability to rise to an occasion.

In 2011, Rosen successfully auditioned for “American Idol,” the singing competition on Fox, and finished among the top 16 performers in the show’s 10th season. He has also appeared onstage with Kenny Rogers, Rascal Flatts and Debbie Gibson, opened for Aaron Carter and Cassadee Pope, and sung at benefit concerts across the country. According to his official online biography, Rosen has composed more than 100 songs, writing and arranging the lyrics and music and co-producing the recordings. His music spans pop, soul, R&B and country.

At Hofstra, Rosen is majoring in jazz and commercial music and has a 3.93 grade point average. Robinson said he impressed in his audition for the music department, and its faculty later gave him its Most Outstanding Freshman award.

“I find Robbie to be very professional, friendly, supportive of his peers, down to earth, thoughtful … He takes his academics very seriously and takes his music and writing very seriously,” she said.

Hofstra administrators decided last year that they wanted to replace the university’s alma mater, “The Netherlands.” According to Hofstra publications, English instructor Hans Gottlieb wrote the song in the late 1930s, and set it to the tune of the Dutch national anthem, a 16th century original, with lyrics like “O Hofstra, to honor thy name we foregather / Rejoicing in voicing thy praises anew.” (University founder William Hofstra was Dutch-American.)