History

Adelphi University’s roots reach back to 1863 and the founding of the Adelphi Academy, a private preparatory school located at 412 Adelphi Street, Brooklyn, New York. The school quickly gained a reputation for its innovative curriculum, particularly in physical culture and early childhood education. By 1893, 1,032 students were enrolled in its primary, grammar, three-year subcollegiate and two-year collegiate division.

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 the 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, 1895. 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 Secretary of the University. For the next 25 years, the Academy remained intact yet separate from the College.

Over the course of the next one hundred years Adelphi grew and changed significantly. For more than three decades following 1912, the institution served only women. In 1944, Adelphi’s School of Nursing became the first such school established by a college in New York State in response to the pressing need for nurses created by the United States’ entry into World War II. To mark the opening of two federally funded residence halls for women, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt delivered an address at Adelphi titled, “The Challenge of Nursing for Young Women Today.” Within five years, the School—one of the largest college-units of the United States Cadet Nurse Corps—graduated 500 nursing students into active service in the Corps and expanded the College’s enrollment by 1,200 students.

After the war, Adelphi reverted to its original coeducational model to accommodate returning World War II servicemen. The School of Social Work was founded in 1949; doctoral education followed in 1950. Adelphi’s program in clinical psychology was formally organized in 1952 and evolved into the Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, which has the distinction of being the first university-based graduate school in psychotherapy.

In 1963, after another decade of expansion, Adelphi was granted university status by the Board of Regents. By the 1970s, the Garden City campus, established in 1929, had expanded from its original three buildings—Blodgett, Levermore, and Woodruff Halls—to 24 buildings on 75 acres, including the Leon A. Swirbul Library, now a fully computerized collection of more than 1.7 million volumes and microformat and audiovisual items.

Today, Adelphi University’s 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; the School of Education; the School of Nursing; the School of Social Work; and University College. Uniting these diverse liberal arts and professional programs is their shared tradition of academic innovation and rigor and their common philosophy of education and lifetime learning. Their more than 500 full- and part-time faculty serve over 8,000 undergraduate and graduate degree candidates. The University maintains off-campus centers in Hauppauge, Manhattan, and Poughkeepsie.

While focusing its rich resources on the needs of its students, 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.

President Robert A. Scott joins Trustees, senior administrators, faculty,
and students at groundbreaking ceremony for the new fine arts building.