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We live in a society framed by short-term horizons. Want to know what happened in the world yesterday? Well, keep scrolling because your favorite news site now prioritizes live, to-the-minute updates over ancient stories from 24 hours ago.
We want it all, and we want it now. Which makes a man who has dedicated himself to a long-term vision at the same institution for nearly two decades somewhat of an outlier – in the most intriguing sense of the word.
It was 18 years ago that Christopher Storm arrived at Adelphi University’s 30-hectare campus in Garden City, New York, for his first job as an Assistant Professor in Mathematics, keen to teach and research.
“We’re teaching students for tomorrow so they’ll be broadly well-served in their careers.”
Christened as Adelphi College in 1896, since the 1930s the institution’s mantra has been rooted in workforce development and community engagement, showcased by its pioneering nursing and social work programs. The university was part of the United States Cadet Nursing Corp, readying nurses for the World War II effort, and Eleanor Roosevelt even graced the verdant campus, ‘blessing’ some of the dormitories.
“And so the university grows and expands from there,” says Storm, who took over as Interim President of the privately funded university in June.
“We’ve added teacher preparation programs, we’ve added business programs. We were one of the first institutions to have adult education degree completion programs.
“We recognize that there are a lot of people who want to learn who aren’t necessarily following the traditional high school, college, job path. The university has really evolved from that original mission.”
Tangible evidence of that growth is crystalized by 4,645 square meters of prime New York real estate – otherwise known as Adelphi’s Manhattan Center, due to have its ribbon cut in summer 2026.
Located on Fifth Avenue, the snazzy new facility will offer a suite of career-focused courses, ranging from business analytics and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) education to creative writing and general psychology with a concentration in HR – alongside the Adelphi stalwarts nursing and social work, naturally.
Smart classrooms and simulation labs will feature prominently. Moreover, Storm is aiming to subvert the traditional education delivery model with so-called low-residency programs – to accommodate people’s changing life patterns and personal situations – whereby students devote more time to online instruction than physically attending lectures.
Amid the current and distinctly fervent hype, one Manhattan Center program likely to generate enough applications to test the most robust of inboxes is Adelphi’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning degree, which builds upon the university’s core strengths in mathematics, statistics and computer science.
Having launched its AI degree program in fall 2025 at the Garden City campus, Adelphi has been quick to embrace the burgeoning technology within other course subjects.
“It’s important we’re not just reacting educationally and teaching students for today,” Storm explains. “We’re teaching students for tomorrow so they’ll be broadly well-served in their careers.
“A university really is a village.”
“We want to teach you to think better, to be more creative, to exercise more agency in your life. And we want to be sure you understand that AI is a tool.
“So we’re seeing faculty asking students to run prompts through AI and then critique the outcome. What’s lacking there? Does it have a voice, texture? Is that something you actually want to read? Is that something you want your marketing campaign to be built around? Or is it kind of boring and flat and sounds like everything else?”
Today, as in the 1930s, Adelphi prides itself on workplace development, with the lofty aim of ensuring each of the 7,400 students is given the right hands-on experience before diving into the choppy waters of the real world.
To that end, the university is constantly exploring different avenues for experiential learning, via vehicles such as Scholars Pursuing Arts, Research and Knowledge (SPARK) to facilitate undergraduate research and the Jagger Community Fellows program, which offers students paid internships in the nonprofit sector.
Equally, Adelphi remains buoyed about its tightly woven relationships with businesses and industry in New York State. Thanks to a US$100,000 donation from regional bank M&T, the university has established a partnership with New Hour, an organization that helps previously incarcerated women return to work, and is currently in discussion with healthcare provider Northwell Health about initiatives to support neurodivergent students.
Local credit union Jovia, which supplies ATMs to the campus, funds mentoring programs and offers students invaluable resume review sessions. On a more pragmatic yet no less key level, Adelphi’s IT infrastructure collaboration with cutting-edge technology services and solutions company Presidio provides the backbone for the university’s digital future.
Though Storm admits the situation is “somewhat complicated in the United States at the moment”, Adelphi also remains committed to a network of scholarship alliances with universities around the world, even offering English courses to students who are academically gifted but may lack the necessary linguistic skills.
With such sway, Adelphi University now represents something of an economic juggernaut in the New York region, contributing more than US$500 million a year to the economy, thanks to everything from taxes paid by employees to the student population’s spending in shops, restaurants, cafes and the like throughout the metropolitan region.
“A university really is a village,” Storm points out.
“There are a lot of people who want to learn who aren’t necessarily following the traditional high school, college, job path.”
Storm has only been the Interim President for six months, but his relatively short tenure has not blurred his overarching vision for Adelphi as it prepares to unveil its Manhattan Center and leverage already impressive sustainability feats – 40 percent of the university’s power is generated on campus, with a cogeneration plant and two buildings boasting solar panels.
“My goal is to have the university in good shape operationally and from a management perspective, so that any future president can arrive and immediately start to add value and vision,” he says.
True to form, Adelphi is here for the long haul.
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