Bay Shore Wellness Alliance

Adelphi University

Adelphi University’s roots reach back to 1863 and the founding of the Adelphi Academy, a private preparatory school in Brooklyn, New York. The Academy was incorporated in 1869 and its Board of Trustees was charged with establishing “a first class institution for the broadest and most thorough training, and to make its advantages as accessible as possible to the largest numbers of our population.” The school quickly gained a reputation for its innovative curriculum, particularly in physical culture and early childhood education.
The appointment of Dr. Charles H. Levermore as the head of the Academy in 1893 was an important moment in Adelphi’s history. Realizing the city of Brooklyn was without a liberal arts college, Levermore seized the opportunity to establish Adelphi College. Through the efforts of Timothy Woodruff, former Lieutenant Governor of New York State and future president of Adelphi’s Board of Trustees, Adelphi College, with 57 students and 16 instructors, was granted a charter—one of the earliest charters granted to a coeducational college by the Board of Regents of the State of New York—on June 24, 1896. Henceforth, degrees issued bore the seals of Adelphi College and of the University of the State of New York and were signed by the officers of the College and by the Chancellor and the Secretary of the University. For the next 25 years, the Academy remained intact yet separate from the College.
Over the course of the next 100 years Adelphi grew and changed significantly. In 1929, Adelphi University became the first private, coeducational institution of higher education on Long Island. Since that time, more than 100,000 students have passed through our doors, leaving their mark on the University and the world beyond.
Today, Adelphi is thriving. Our colleges and schools include the College of Arts and Sciences; the Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies; the Honors College; the School of Business; Ruth S. Ammon School of Education; School of Nursing; School of Social Work; and University College. With new leadership, we have reinvigorated our academic community and invested in our future. Our faculty is leading the way to ensure that our students receive the finest education in the region and that Adelphi continues to serve as a vital resource to our local communities. As we turn our strategic plan into a vision for our future, the campus community has come together to accomplish mutual goals centered on scholarship and student achievement.
While universities around the country have been eliminating faculty, Adelphi has hired more than 280 new professors since 2001. Current full-time and part-time faculty total 956, with a student/faculty ratio of 10:1. To ensure that our scholars have the resources needed to reach their goals, we have invested millions of dollars in infrastructure. We have renovated our facilities; upgraded our technology and created smart classrooms; dramatically improved our libraries—both facilities and collections; and invested in new equipment, including state-of-the-art lasers for two new physics laboratories, new pianos from Steinway & Sons, enhanced digital music facilities to support our music and performing arts programs, and built and opened in spring 2006, the 18,000-square-foot Adele and Herbert J. Klapper Center for Fine Arts. In 2006, the University broke ground on an ambitious campus expansion project, now completed. The project added new Centers for Performing Arts and Recreation and Sports; an outdoor sports complex; the Alice Brown Early Learning Center; and additional parking.
Scholars throughout the University are making significant contributions to their disciplines. In recent years, Adelphi faculty members have been recognized as Fulbright Scholars and Hartford Scholars, and have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. The School of Social Work is accredited for the maximum time that the accrediting agency grants. In fact, our School of Social Work was reaccredited with no recommendations for improvement by the Council on Social Work Education’s site evaluation committee, and the School’s self-study document so impressed the council that it is now used as a model in reaccreditation training sessions for other programs.??Currently, over 8,600 students are thriving in our classrooms, in our programs, and on our sports fields at the main Garden City campus and at centers in New York City, Hauppauge, and Poughkeepsie. Our students have gone on to achieve awards and national recognition for their scholarship, service, and leadership. ??Adelphi also seeks to serve its locality, state, and nation through the research and practice of its faculty; the strengthening of ties between the professional schools and community; the staging of distinguished cultural events at its campuses; and most essentially, the education of a generation of future leaders and informed citizens, professionals, and community members.
This page was last modified on September 15, 2011.