Many alumni have experienced the gratification of being a scholarship donor—the pleasure of enabling a deserving young Princetonian to study and learn, and of serving the University that nourished the donor’s own intellectual aspirations.
Allen R. Adler ’67 has created an approach that offers, he says, even higher satisfaction. The Allen R. Adler Scholarship, established in 1996, supports a given student for all four college years. Currently there is an Adler Scholar in each of the undergraduate classes on campus.
“Because the scholarship benefits the recipient for four years, I’ve had the opportunity to watch students evolve and mature,” says Adler, developing relationships with the students throughout their college careers, and observing their personal and intellectual growth.
“I’ve been tremendously impressed with what the Princeton experience has helped create in these individuals,” he says. So far, 11 students have held Adler Scholarships. The students, selected by the University, have curricular interests that span the academic spectrum, as well as a variety of extracurricular interests; many have been varsity athletes. Adler meets informally with all the students at least once a year.
“Often,” observes Adler, “the entering students are shy, have little experience of the world, have difficulty articulating their ideas, are uncomfortable expressing opinions, and may not interact easily with other students.” But after studying at Princeton, he says, “They are extraordinary. They’ve become leaders in their departments, in their clubs, and on the field.” Princeton effects, he says, “a significant transformation in their ability to articulate their interests and their personal and professional goals. It’s been a special pleasure to see this development.”
Adler credits the transformation partly to the precept system and partly to the demands of the student’s major. By the time the students are ready to graduate, “They are not professional scholars, but they understand scholarship; they have learned how to do research, how to write, how to evaluate information.”
He has found the correspondence he receives from the scholarship recipients impressive and moving. “The letters don’t just say, ‘Thank you.’ They are thoughtful reflections on the college experience, and expressions of the student’s internal life.”
Adler continues to admire the maturing students and the University they attend. “Princeton has made a vast difference for these people,” he says. “The scholarship donor may pay the bill, but the University produces the result.”
Adler, president of Allen Adler Enterprises in New York City, was a Woodrow Wilson School major at Princeton, and a member of the basketball team. He graduated from Harvard Business School with highest honors and was a Baker Scholar. A longtime Annual Giving volunteer and past class president, Adler chaired the Special Gifts Committee when his class set a record for its 25th Reunion. In addition, he served as co-chair of the Special Gifts Committee for his 30th and 35th Reunions.
Princeton is not the only institution to have benefited from Adler’s commitment to education and to social justice, nationally and internationally. He is on the boards of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, the New School for General Studies, and Rockefeller University. He also is active with Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He and his wife, Frances F. L. Beatty, have two sons, one of whom, Alexander, is a member of the Class of 2010.