Kraemer ’64 Retires as President of Concordia University

Richard Kraemer ’64, president of Concordia University College of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, since 1991, has retired effective this past June.

Richard Kraemer '64

Kraemer joined the faculty of Concordia in 1977, served as interim president in 1990-’91, and was elected president in the spring of 1991. During his tenure, the number of students increased from 200 to nearly 2,000, and five new buildings were constructed on campus.

Last fall, the university was named one of the top three small universities in Canada in the Toronto Globe and Mail national rankings.

Kraemer says his Valpo education played a pivotal role in the career he chose.

“I was intending to become a nuclear physicist, and I did enjoy all my science courses,” he says. “Midway through my second year, however, I was being drawn to pastoral ministry and began majoring in philosophy. I was particularly happy to discover in my religion courses that one could reconcile faith with reason.”

Several Valpo professors served as special mentors to Kraemer. They include: Kenneth Klein, the late Robert Bertram, Walter Keller, Edgar Senne, Norman Widiger, Edward Schroeder ’50 and Karl Lutze ’80 (honorary).

“It was President O.P. Kretzmann, however, who made one of the deepest impressions on me,” Kraemer says. “His style of presidency, his articulate messages in the chapel and in the Cresset, and love for students provided the kind of example that I have consciously or unconsciously tended to follow.”