Earlier today President Crossman shared he will be stepping down as Adler University’s sixth president at the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. I am writing on behalf of the Board of Trustees to thank Dr. Crossman for 20 years of extraordinary leadership of our institution and to share early plans for the search for the University’s next president.

Dr. Crossman has been a transformational and inspirational leader for Adler. Since his appointment in 2003, he has led the centering of social justice in our mission, classrooms, and community engagement. We are grateful for his exemplary service as one of the U.S. and Canada’s longest-serving university presidents. Adler has achieved numerous milestones stewarded by Dr. Crossman, including:

• Growing Adler from a psychology school enrolling approximately 200 students to a university uniquely focused on social justice, enrolling about 2,000 students.
• Evolving our curricula and community work through revising our mission, vision, and values to become more focused on the philosophy of Alfred Adler. We changed our name to Adler University in 2015.
• Launching the University’s second campus in Vancouver in 2005 and its third, the Online Campus, in 2015.
• Building the infrastructure for community engagement through establishing the Institutes for Social Change, which now includes four institutes and centers, and Adler Community Health Services, which converted our Chicago walk-in clinic into community-based work in Chicago and Vancouver. Partnerships have also been expanded for student training and community impact through 1,776 partner organizations.
• Supporting innovations in our learning community and launching scores of groundbreaking programs, including the first scholar-practitioner Psy.D. program in Canada and the bachelor completion program in applied psychology at Big Muddy River Correctional Center in Illinois.
• Focusing on student success as evident through strong graduation and retention rates, and our alums’ pursuits of meaningful careers.
• Building a diverse and inclusive university, and setting a course for Adler to be an anti-racist university.
• Ensuring the University takes a stand on racial equity, undocumented students, and climate justice.
• Building new world-class campus facilities in Chicago in 2010 and in Vancouver in 2017. In 2016, we purchased the Chicago facility, resulting in annual savings of $1.6M to redeploy to education.
• Growing our revenues and fundraising to ensure our sustainability. Revenues have grown from $4.6M in 2003 to $48.1M in 2022, and fundraising has grown from $16K to $3.8M annually in this same period.  We completed our first comprehensive fundraising campaign, the Adler Campaign for Social Justice, in 2020, surpassing our $10M goal. Scholarships have grown from $42K in 2003 to $6.7M this academic year, and we have decreased students’ average cost to attend by more than 9% over the past five years.

This coming year, Dr. Crossman will lead the first year of implementing the 2023-2026 strategic plan, Building Community for Social Justice. Your work to author the plan uniquely positions Adler for its next president, paving the way for continued growth and success throughout the transition.

In the coming weeks, I will share more about the upcoming presidential search. A search committee with trustee, faculty, staff, and student representation will shepherd the process, community input sessions will occur in early summer, and interviews will begin in the coming year.

The next 18 months are an exciting and important time for Adler. Dr. Crossman will work with all of us as the new strategic plan gets underway, and we will work with you as we begin the process of finding the University’s next leader. The Board and I look forward to our continued success with all of the members of the University community as we advance our Adlerian mission.

Noland Joiner
Chair, Adler University Board of Trustees