Alderman's crusade encountered some resistance from traditionalists and never challenged the Jim Crow system of segregated schooling.

He became a schoolteacher in Goldsboro, North Carolina, superintendent of city schools there, from 1885 to 1889, and conductor of the state teachers' institutes, from 1889 to 1892.

[3] There he stayed for 27 years, until his death in 1931 from a stroke in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, while en route to deliver a speech in Illinois.

[3] He was a noted public speaker, and won fame for his memorial address for Woodrow Wilson, delivered to a joint session of Congress on December 15, 1924.

Since its founding in 1819, university had been governed by its Board of Visitors, but increasing discord between Visitors and the faculty, as well as the rising administrative burden of dealing with expanding academic departments and burgeoning student enrollments, led to the decision to move forward with the creation of the office of the president.

He began to serve in the fall of 1904 but was not formally inaugurated until April 13, 1905 (Thomas Jefferson's birthday, celebrated as Founder's Day).

[11] He then restructured existing programs, separating the former “academic department” into the College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in accordance with a growing move to standardize college educations by the Association of American Universities.

During the first years of his presidency he established its first endowment fund and led the fundraising of almost $700,000 to meet a $500,000 challenge grant from Andrew Carnegie.

[15] He spent two-thirds of his long-term at the University of Virginia physically disabled after a bad bout with tuberculosis.

[18] In September 2019, fliers quoting racist comments made by Alderman were anonymously posted around the University's campus.