After 5-Month Search, Saint Xavier University Names New President

CHICAGO — After a five-month search, the Saint Xavier University Board of Trustees have named Keith Elder, Ph.D., MPH, MPA, as the Catholic university’s 22nd president beginning March 1.
Trustees were guided by Academic Search, which specializes in higher education leadership, with input from community consultants, who selected Elder from a diverse and impressive pool of candidates.

The Alabama native comes to SXU with extensive leadership, most recently serving as executive president of Mississippi College, Christian University in Clinton, MS. Previously, he served as executive vice president and provost at Mississippi College and founding dean and professor of the School of Public Health at Samford University.

Elder’s doctoral training was completed at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he was a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Minority Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. He also served as chair for the Department of Health Management and Policy in the College for Public Health and Justice at Saint Louis University (SLU) and as faculty for the Department of Health Management and Policy in the College for Public Health and Justice at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health.

He has spent the majority of his higher education career at faith-based institutions and has worked with colleagues to improve student success and access to higher education, regardless of socio-economic status. Elder remains an active scholar committed to evidence-based research that will help inform health programs, health policy, and health care delivery, with a specialized interest in men’s health, chronic disease management, health information technology as a means to promote health, aging and disability research, cancer prevention and outcomes, and reducing health disparities and inequities.

Elder has also served as principal investigator or investigator on funded projects by various health associations and institutes and as a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal on Public Health.

“We are grateful for the service of Interim President Rebecca Sherrick, which has sowed the seeds for a new culture of innovation and collaboration on campus,” the SXU Board of Trustees said in a written statement. “Under her leadership, SXU has consolidated administrative units, expanded diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and created sustainable solutions to vexing academic problems. Her work has enhanced our capacity to collaborate and innovate in response to the changing needs of our student profile.”

The SXU Board of Trustees is eager to partner with Dr. Elder and the SXU community to continue to build on this positive trajectory and will share more information about getting to know the new president in the coming months.”