John Crossley

Position on the Board: Board Member
Company: Meritus University

John Edward Crossley was born in Espanola, Ontario, raised in Orillia, Ontario, and currently makes his home in Hanwell, New Brunswick. He is a political scientist (BA Hons from Brock and MA and PhD from Toronto) with particular interest in Canadian national and provincial public policy and public administration. His doctoral dissertation was a history of Canadian Indian policy to 1945. In May 2008 he became the founding President of Fredericton’s Meritus University, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Group, Inc., of Phoenix, Arizona. For six years before coming to Fredericton to start Meritus, John was Principal of Renison University College, an Anglican college affiliated with the University of Waterloo. Prior to that appointment, he had been, for fifteen years, a member of the faculty in the Political Studies Department at the University of Prince Edward Island. While at UPEI, John served in a variety of progressively more responsible administrative positions, including Chair of Political Studies, Coordinator of Canadian Studies, Coordinator for the 1992 Learned Societies’ Conference, Dean of Arts, Vice President, and Vice President (Academic Support). He represented Prince Edward Island on the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (MPHEC) for seven years and was Chair of the MPHEC from July 2000 to June 2002. He has published extensively on various aspects of Prince Edward Island government, public policy, and public administration. He is married to Lee Bartley. They have one son, Robert, who lives in Charlottetown.