THE story of Montclair, in a sense, is a tale of two cities.

On one side lies the township, an upscale community nestled along a hilltop 12 miles from Manhattan, a place where families put down roots and flourish. Perched at the northern tip of town, however, is a different sort of metropolis. Here, most of the population is transient, pouring in on weekdays to pursue an education.

This second city is Montclair State University, the second-largest public institution of higher learning in New Jersey. Yet despite the name that ties it to the surroundings, the university has long felt like a world apart.

''We're a string bean, if you will,'' explained Joe Hartnett, the township manager, describing the lay of the land. ''It's a long skinny town. Montclair State is at the farthest extreme of the town, geographically. They're as far away from the downtown area as you can get.''

Although Montclair includes both a city and a university, it has long lacked the integrated intimacy of a traditional college town. Seventy-two percent of the some 16,000 university students are commuters and, often with jobs and responsibilities at home, many of them study and run. The bulk of the campus, which has grown drastically since Montclair State opened its doors, first as a teacher's college in 1908, spills into two other towns: Clifton and Little Falls.

The distance between Montclair and its university, however, runs even deeper than geography. There's a psychological rift: by and large, students find the town quaint but stuffy, while wealthy town dwellers imagine that a state school has little to offer them. When Montclair sought a town slogan last August, one resident, Christopher Castellani, author of the Montclair Journal Web log, proposed impishly: ''Montclair: Wooo, We Have a University Here?''

Soon, however, there may be more to ''wooo'' about, for students and townsfolk alike. Montclair State University is growing. And the larger the institution gets, the harder it will be for the town to ignore.

''The university is bigger, it's getting a much larger enrollment, it's drawing a lot more students and staff,'' said Mayor Ed Remsen. ''That increases the likelihood that we'll draw more and more of them to participate in the life of this town.'' To that end, he has also been discussing, with college officials, the possibility of an intratown shuttle and, if all goes according to plan, the route could be running next year.

Fueled by an influx of federal funds, the university has been gradually replacing and enlarging its own internal shuttle service. Diverting a bus or two off the campus loop could help bring people together.

''Our hope is that now we can take a university shuttle, run it around the townships, pick up the senior citizens who can't get into cars and drive, pick up maybe at the schools and other places, and bring them to the campus so we can increase access to what we have to offer,'' said Dr. Susan A. Cole, president of Montclair State. ''And the flip side of that is of course putting our university students on the shuttles and taking them downtown so they can go to the movies, shop, go out to eat, buy books, go to the Gap, etc.''

Lots of Expansion, Diner Included

There has never been a better time to lure the denizens of Montclair to campus. Over the past few years, Montclair State has embarked on an ambitious campaign to expand, culturally, academically and even gastronomically. In the late summer of 2001, the Red Hawk Diner, a chrome-and-pleather salute to Jerseyana, was carted uphill in five sections and plunked down beside the student center, where it has become a place to snack, study and swill coffee 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

New buildings, designed in the school's signature Spanish Mission style, are cropping up like a conquistador's dream across campus. Many may even have enough magnetism to lure Montclair residents.

For instance, the $26 million Alexander Kasser Theater opened its doors just last month, amid much fanfare and an inaugural performance by Mikhail Baryshnikov, which packed the 499-seat house. A new children's center, which will open next year, will be a learning laboratory for early childhood teachers and serve the children of faculty members, students and local residents. And, perhaps most ambitiously, the largest academic building in the university's history is now growing inside a cocoon of scaffolding. Scheduled for completion next year, it carries a price tag of $80 million.

As the educational empire grows, so, too, does the student population, which is currently approaching 16,000 and will assume from 2,000 to 4,000 more students by 2008. With a rising proportion of students seeking a residential experience, the university, which now sleeps 3,000, wants to more than double that number.

This fall the Village at Little Falls, a newly opened dormitory cluster, filled to capacity hours after applications became available. Even with new housing in place, the overflow was so great that the university had to rent two hotels. According to Dr. Cole, the ranks of students who want to live where they study are swelling. The university hopes to meet their demand and dispel its reputation as a ''suitcase college.''

''New Jersey's public institutions really did not provide much of a residential experience in the past,'' Dr. Cole said. ''That is one of the reasons that students went out of state. They wanted to go to a 'real college,' where they can live in a residence hall and have recreational facilities, something that looked like a college and felt like a college in terms of the overall total experience of the institution.''

The next phase of construction, Dr. Cole anticipates, will offer beds to 2,500 more on the site of the current Clove Road apartments. To complement the on-campus experience, she also has plans for a new recreation center: a 75,000-square-foot megagym with a swimming pool, racquetball courts, a track and other fitness areas. The center will be built along the northern edge of campus, on a ridge with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline. And even though Dr. Cole emphasized that state financing has been woefully inadequate -- ''Other states, I might add, build buildings for their public institutions,'' she said -- the university is aggressively pursuing projects like the recreation center, bonding and using the revenue from increased tuition to pay off the debt service.

If more students live on campus at Montclair State, they will offer an opportunity for the town. As adopted members of the local community, they would likely seek shops and services in surrounding towns instead of commuting back home. Dr. Cole also hopes that, if the university can enlarge its capacity to teach and house students, it can also help turn the tide that lures many college-bound seniors out of state each year.

''When you send students out of state you are not going to get them back into the work force,'' she said. ''You're certainly not going to get the most competitive of them back into the work force, and you are certainly not going to get the ones, data has shown, in science and technology fields. They're gone.'' According to the most recent statistics available at the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, 43 percent of high school seniors who graduated in 2000 and enrolled in college within 12 months went out of state.

''People who want to go here, we want to be able accommodate them,'' said Jeanne Oswald, the commission's executive director. She added that the number of students staying in state has risen by a percent or two over the past few years, and that state education officials want to increase the capacity of public institutions by 45,000 to 50,000 by the year 2010.

A Little Cross-Pollination, Please

With students trading their daily commutes for the comradeship of dorm life, and new attractions blossoming at Montclair State, there has never been a more opportune moment for cross-pollination between town and campus cultures. But a physical and psychological gulf looms. Not only does the university sit atop a hill; it's more than a mile away from uptown, the nearest of Montclair's commercial centers. For busy students, the hike does not seem worth it, and many do not believe that anything of interest awaits them on the other side.

''I don't hear that much about the students going out into Montclair and hanging out,'' said Alicia Blakney, a junior. Nose-deep in her books, she sat studying in a booth at the Red Hawk Diner one recent afternoon, reflecting on the difference between Montclair and New Brunswick, home of Rutgers, the state's largest university. ''Rutgers is right in the community, so students find things to go do there, as opposed to Montclair, where we're all secluded up here,'' she said. ''Montclair's a quiet town, so you don't know too much of college life outside the campus.''

When it comes to competing with Montclair for students' attention, New York City got a lot closer recently. New Jersey Transit opened a new commuter rail station at Montclair State in October, complete with a 1,500-space parking deck. The ride to Penn Station takes less than an hour, pitting the attractions of Montclair against those of the big city.

For some of Montclair's merchants, the university population feels like a missed opportunity, frustratingly just out of reach.

''I really do not sense any traffic from Montclair State, but, boy, would we do anything to collaborate with them to get traffic down here,'' said Valerie Fischer, president of the Upper Montclair Business Association and co-owner of the Banyan Tree, a luxury housewares store. ''I have two customers that I know work at Montclair State, and that's all. I would expect more traffic.''

Kim Thomas, a 20-year-old Montclair State sophomore who works at the Gap on Valley Road, suggested that the uptown area's expensive shopping district is out of step with collegiate sensibilities.

''Even if you have an apartment, you're not going to fill it with stuff from Williams-Sonoma; if you're a college student, you don't necessarily have a lot of money,'' explained Ms. Thomas, adding that most students who trickle down from campus make a beeline for one of just two destinations: the Gap or Starbucks. ''There's not a lot of stuff down here, unless you need to get a gift.'' She gestured out the window, where high-end stores like Baby Boom and Olympic stood along Valley Road, catering to the very young and the middle-aged, with little in between.

While downtown Montclair offers more of the laid-back, funky vibe that college students crave, it's on the opposite edge of town, more than three miles from campus. Still, said Anthony Brinton, a Montclair State graduate, the neighborhood manages to attract a group of student stalwarts who are willing to make the trek.

At Cafe Eclectic, where the goateed Mr. Brinton works as a barista, college students gather among the overstuffed armchairs and velvet couches to socialize and study. A few bar and restaurant combos, he added, also cater to the college crowd, including the Office and Just Jake's, where live bands offer an extra enticement.

Still, Mr. Brinton added, it's not always easy for college kids to integrate, or even ingratiate, themselves with the people who live in Montclair. He recalled his first serious foray into the community, when he moved off the school grounds and into an apartment near the Montclair Art Museum.

''When I first moved off campus, some of our neighbors tried to get our landlord not to rent to college students,'' he said, grimacing. ''Most people here want a quiet neighborhood.''

Perception and Reality

One step at a time, Montclair and university officials are trying to bridge the gap between town and gown.

''For a town that has a major university in it, it doesn't have the same kind of college feel that people would expect,'' reflected Mr. Remsen, the mayor. That concern helped drive the intratown shuttle plan, which he hopes will foster familiarity between town and campus.

Better public transportation may also help ease the campus's traffic woes. Despite the construction of two new parking decks -- one next to the Kasser Theater, and the other at the newly opened New Jersey Transit rail hub -- students and locals alike bemoan a perpetual crunch of cars.

''How bad is the parking situation there?'' asked Louise Maxwell, exasperated by the scads of students' cars that line the street across from her Upper Mountain Avenue home. ''That's a source of endless frustration on our block.'' She said that the poor sightlines and speeding cars that barrel down her street make it hard to drive.

Mr. Hartnett, the town manager, has coped with the situation by buying four portable machines that display, and record, the speed of passing motorists. ''Those spend a lot of time up in the area of Montclair State because we do get a lot of speeding up there,'' he said. ''I get calls from the residents in the area of Montclair State, or wherever in town we put them up. People are thanking us profusely.''

Even more challenging than the physical divide -- traversable by bus, car or intrepid foot -- is the psychological gap between students and residents. Rita Jacobs, a professor of journalism at the university, suggests that Montclair has long suffered from a reverse town-gown syndrome.

''The whole notion of town-gown was that the townies were less than the gownies,'' she said, ''and in Montclair, it's always been the other way. They send their children to Princeton or Yale. When I first got here, I felt that the people in the town were snooty about the college, because they thought it was still a state teacher's college.''

Perceptions, she suggested, may lag years behind reality. ''I think that the town is waking up partially because of the activity, the building, the cultural events. The more positive attention you bring to an institution, the more people notice it.''

In its latest ranking, U.S. News & World Report placed Montclair State No.62 among northern universities that focus on baccalaureate and master's degrees. Academically, it is possible that more Montclair natives are paying attention to the university in their midst. In the fall of 2004, 53 town residents applied for admission, 15 percent more than the previous year. This growth may seem minor, yet it easily outstrips a 6 percent overall increase in the number of applications over the same two-year period. The university's annual tuition for in-state students is about $5,000 and more than $8,000 for nonresidents. Tuition at Princeton, by comparison, is about $30,000 a year.

Freyda Lazarus, director of the Center for Community Based Learning at the university, believes that shared projects may be the best way to foster relationships between students, faculty, and residents.

''We have in the vicinity of 650 to 700 students in multiple projects through service learning in the community,'' Ms. Lazarus said. ''We're looking for more and more ways to bring the community to the campus, and the reverse.''

Montclair State has partnerships with 23 school districts in Northern New Jersey, where student teachers gain a deeper understanding of their trade. Through the Community Outreach Partnership Center, students also collaborate with local organizations in the Pine Street and Glenfield Park neighborhoods, initiating projects to promote strategies for community organizing, urban education and affordable housing. Dozens of other projects encourage students and faculty to lend their expertise to regional businesses and nonprofits.

''I think that a great deal of effort is being made to change that perception,'' Dr. Lazarus said, '' and perception isn't as important as work done.''

Yet a vast number of Montclair residents still regard Montclair State University as a separate continent. Jokingly calling it a ''separatist state,'' Mr. Castellani, who writes the Montclair Journal Web log, likes to describe his own limited interaction with the institution. ''When I drive by, '' he says, ''they always have the correct time.''

Dr. Jacobs offered a more familial way to understand the relationship between Montclair and its university. ''You have a brother who's adorable, but you can't see it and neither can your friends because you grew up with him,'' she mused. ''There's much more happening than people know.''