22 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • AUGUST 2021
CORNER OFFICE
DR. CHRISTINE RIORDAN, PRESIDENT OF ADELPHI UNIVERSITY
READING, WRITING, AND REOPENING
BY CLAUDE SOLNIK
Adelphi University President Dr. Christine
Riordan, the school’s 10th president,
took office in July 2015. She talked with
the Long Island Press about the past six
years, the pandemic and the future.
What are you proudest of so far,
beyond how Adelphi handled the
pandemic?
We launched more than 30 academic degree
programs over the last five years.
We have career outcome placement
rates of 94 percent for our undergraduate
and 90 percent for graduate. We
outpaced the national market in terms
of starting salaries our students are
earning. Our student satisfaction has
gone up. We emphasize experiential
learning so students get critical experience
in their fields.
Have you opened any new buildings
and done any major renovations?
We’ve done extensive renovations
across the campus, including new science
labs as well as updated classrooms.
We did a $50 million renovation of our
50-year-old university center. It’s now
about 110,000 square feet and a stateof
the-art hub of our university. We
finished it during the pandemic, which
is remarkable. We completed a $76 million
renovation of our Nexus Building,
the home to our College of Nursing and
Public Health that also has our Student
Success Center and our Offices of Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion.
How did you personally and the school
itself adapt to the pandemic?
We had known about the issue emerging
in China since December. Some of
our students who had gone home for
the holiday break were impacted first.
I assembled a threat assessment team
focused on the pandemic in January of
2020. By February, we knew it would be
very serious. We shut down the university
in March, sent our students home
and moved more than 1,000 courses and
all our services online.
How did you make the transition to
online and how much will remain?
Prior to that, all of our units had done
business continuity plans. Between
February and March, we had everybody
do planning in case we had to go remote.
We executed those plans. Our Faculty
Center for Professional Excellence did
an amazing amount of work with our
faculty, getting them up to speed with
online classes. They hosted online
workshops through the spring and
summer and focused on the quality of
the experience for our students and
faculty members.
Will Adelphi continue to offer online
options?
We’ll see more classes online. Some
classes lend themselves to online format
and others need to be in person.
For example, our dance instructors in
the fall of 2020 conducted dance classes
online. We were glad that by spring of
2021, we were able to have them in person.
I think there was a lot of learning
and innovation. As we continue to think
about 2021 and beyond, it'll be a mixture
of online, hybrid – half in person and
half online – and fully in-person classes.
What does reopening, if you can call
it, that mean?
People haven’t been back together for
the most part in a year and a half. We
had some classes in person in the fall
of 2020 and spring of 2021. Everyone
wore masks and socially distanced.
We required daily health screenings,
performed random Covid testing,
installed temperature scanners. And
we did what was permitted by the state.
Opening a university is like opening a
minicity. We have gyms, retail with the
bookstore, dining facilities, hotels with
residence halls, interfaith, day care. We
had about 15 different opening plans
per state guidelines. The last thing to
reopen was the gyms and athletics.
How is morale and overall mental
health after a year of isolation for
some people?
I think everybody’s excited to come
back together. There’s also some nervousness.
We are very concerned about
the mental health of our students and
employees. We made sure to provide
extra mental health resources. We
now offer both virtual and in-person
counseling for students. We have an employee
assistance program. We started
a partnership with Headspace to offer
meditation sessions for our students.
How is the reopening process
different than a typical return in
September?
Undergraduate students have an online
orientation throughout the summer,
and a three-day in-person welcome
weekend. Events will allow them to
interact with each other and the more
than 80 clubs on campus. We will have
our annual matriculation ceremony
this year to officially welcome them
into the university. This year, we’re
paying attention not only to the firstyear
students, but the second-year
students. We’re planning social events
throughout the fall.
What’s going on with cost and student
debt?
Adelphi awards more than $80 million
in need- and merit-based scholarship
assistance as part of our budgets. It
continues to go up every year. As
part of our Momentum strategic plan,
we started a scholarship matching
program. If a donor gave $25,000, we
would match it. Our average student
debt is about $24,000 and we have a low
loan default rate. We work as closely
as we can with students and families
so they can afford their education and
make it viable.
How do you look at diversity and
increase it?
Five years ago, I introduced a vice
president for diversity, equity, and
inclusion and established a new office
dedicated to making Adelphi a model
university in this area. All search
committees for new faculty, administrators,
and leadership positions go
through diversity training. We look at
how we’re recruiting students. We publish
our materials in Spanish as well as
English. Our financial aid programs
are conducted in English and Spanish.
All of our colleges and schools now
have a diversity, equity, and inclusion
strategic plan. More than 1,000 of our
employees have taken diversity training.
This summer our board elected
Adelphi’s first Black male as chair, our
first Hispanic female as vice-chair,
and our first Asian American male as
secretary.
How has enrollment been affected by
the pandemic?
During the uncertainty and challenge
of the pandemic, we saw a small decline
in undergraduate students while students
and families paused to evaluate
their educational plans. This fall we
have a record incoming first-year class.
We won’t have final numbers now. It
will likely be the largest first-year
class we’ve had in the history of the
university.
Dr. Christine M. Riordan, president of Adelphi University, at the college’s
Garden City campus.
“I think everybody’s excited to come back together.
There’s also some nervousness. We are very
concerned about the mental health of our students
and employees.” -Dr. Christine M. Riordan
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
