ASU President Michael Crow speaks to The State Press editorial staff about upcoming plans for the New American University. (Photo by State Press Staff)
Eleven years ago, Michael Crow was inaugurated as ASU’s 16th president.
He brought with him the bold new idea of the New American University, which has since transformed ASU’s stature within the world of higher education.
ASU has improved since Crow’s arrival, said Jonathan Cole, who was provost and dean of faculties at Columbia University when Crow was the executive vice provost there.
“There’s no question that ASU is already a far greater university than it was,” he said. “From my point of view, from the outside, it’s really worked.”
Columbia Days
Cole and Crow worked closely during their time at Columbia. Cole said Columbia was “floundering” before Crow arrived.
Crow strengthened Columbia’s intellectual property holdings and oversaw the reinvestment of the income from those holdings into the University, he said.
Cole said Crow’s investment strategies were especially helpful for distributing funds to departments such as philosophy that don’t necessarily generate income.
Crow’s dedicated work ethic was important for elevating Columbia’s status, because the University had fewer resources than the other Ivies, he said.
When he found out Crow had been chosen as ASU’s next president, Cole thought it was great for Crow and ASU but bad for Columbia.
“There are very few academic leaders that are irreplaceable,” he said. “Mike is very difficult to replace.”
Cole said ASU’s nature as a public institution made it a good fit for Crow, who has always wanted to be involved in public service, adding that Columbia almost lost him to the Clinton administration a few times.
“At the Ivy League, too often people pride themselves on how selective they are,” he said. “That went against Mike’s grain, I think.”
Crow’s transformation of ASU, which is still an ongoing process, is especially remarkable, because faculty members are often conservative about change, he said.
He said Crow’s model would probably be impossible to implement at an older, more conservative university.
Crow’s commitment to use-oriented research, multidisciplinary studies and solutions for the cost-value issue have made the New American University into an interesting model that has started a debate in higher education, Cole said.
However, his commitment to access is key for ASU, he said.
“He’s a very non-exclusionary person,” Cole said. “I really admire that in him, and I think that’s very good for Arizona.”
Choosing the Next President
Chris Herstam, who was one of the Arizona regents involved in choosing Crow as ASU’s next president, said in an email that the search committee went outside its list of candidates to get Crow.
The committee was using a national search firm that wanted it to choose the next president from its "stable of clients," Herstam said.
However, members of the committee had heard good things about Crow, and they pressured the firm to include him on its list.
“The search firm called Michael Crow an ‘unconventional candidate,’” Herstam said. “They were correct. But the regents felt a successor to the successful and well-liked President Coor needed to be very bright, articulate, dynamic and innovative. In other words, a visionary leader.”
He said Crow had the position from his first interview with the committee, which was impressed by his vision for ASU and his embrace of the University’s large size.
He was what ASU needed at the time, Herstam said.
Herstam is still confident Crow is the right leader for ASU, he said.
“President Crow has exceeded my expectations,” he said. “He is a strong, demanding leader who never slows down. He is just what ASU needed 11 years ago – and what it still needs today.”
From Coor to Crow
Lattie F. Coor, Crow’s presidential predecessor, said he liked Crow’s model of the New American University from the outset.
“I thought it fit perfectly as the next stage of evolution for the University,” he said. “I thought it crystallized and gave direction to a university that is, by definition, a New American University.”
Coor founded the Center for the Future of Arizona with Crow’s wife, Sybil Francis, after leaving ASU. The center takes on state issues for a minimum of five years to try to find solutions for them. Three of the four initiatives the center has taken on have dealt with education.
Coor said the New American University has made ASU even more embedded in the state and has shown state leaders how essential a major university can be to Arizona’s economy.
“There is no great metropolitan area in American that is not served by a dynamic university,” he said. “ASU has emerged increasingly clearly as that force, not only in Phoenix but in Arizona, and I think President Crow continues to do a masterful job in making that happen.”
The New American University model bonds ASU to community issues, making it more vital, Coor said.
He said this has the potential for being a historical step for American universities that could be on par with the creation of land grant universities in the 1860s.
“I think ASU is onto a model that will not only subtly increase its effectiveness, but will also serve as a model for others for how they will move into the 21st century,” Coor said.
President Michael Crow speaks to a colleague on the Tempe campus. Crow strengthened Columbia’s intellectual property holdings and oversaw the reinvestment of the income from those holdings into the University. (Photo by State Press Staff)
Leading the New American University
Paul Johnson, dean of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, said he likes the unified vision the New American University provides.
It makes it easier to lead and it makes it easier to assess progress, he said.
“We’re one of the few places with a very specific set of aspirations,” Johnson said.
He said Crow’s leadership style still allows for freedom under those directives.
Crow sets the University’s overall vision, and then works with individual leaders to make sure their vision lines up with the institution’s, Johnson said.
“He lets the leadership create their local vision for how that should work,” he said.
Johnson, who has been at ASU for 20 years, said there was a lot of questioning of what “New American University” meant when Crow first came to ASU, as well as a skepticism about how long it would last.
The fact that Crow has stayed at ASU to see his vision through testifies to its personal importance to him, Johnson said.
“I think it’s a very personal thing for him,” he said. “I don’t think the New American University and its concepts are an intellectual thing, an abstract thing. ... He really believes that universities need to be more than they have been.”
While there is visible evidence of Crow’s changes in new campus buildings, there have been other, less obvious changes as well, he said.
Johnson said Crow has removed many barriers present at other universities, created a unique identity for ASU and has put more emphasis on student success.
Crow has also made the institution more entrepreneurial, he said.
“I would say the institution is much more entrepreneurial and that makes it much more dynamic and constantly changing,” Johnson said. “I can feel the energy here that I don’t feel on other campuses of other universities.”
Johnson said he is glad he’s had the opportunity to see such a transformation and that he thinks the model will continue to improve the University.
Those changes are hard to predict, but they will have far-reaching effects, he said.
“I don’t know what we’ll look like 10 years from now, but whatever it is, we will always be in a position to make an impact,” Johnson said. “The impact of ASU is going to be reflected in the state of Arizona as a whole. ... I think you will see ASU becoming more and more valued, because the impact becomes more and more obvious.”
Continuous Change
Wil Cardon, CEO of the philanthropic Cardon Group and a friend of Crow’s, said Crow goes to any length to see his vision through.
“People tell him something can’t be done, and he finds a way to get it done,” Cardon said. “He is relentless.”
He said Crow’s focus is continuous improvement and his leadership choices reflect this.
Crow surrounds himself with people who share his vision and are able to implement it, Cardon said.
“That’s the sign of a great leader,” he said.
Cardon said Crow has done an excellent job increasing the University’s social embeddedness, adding that he has a talent for involving people with institution who might not usually be involved.
His work is ultimately for the students, Cardon said.
“He really is interested in bettering students’ lives,” he said. “He wants them to be better people, and everything he does, he does for them.”
Success in Students
Rick Shangraw, CEO of the ASU Foundation, said the focus on social embeddedness is one thing that drew him to ASU.
“I think universities need to be more connected with their local communities,” he said.
Shangraw met Crow in 1982 while they were at graduate school at Syracuse University. Shangraw worked as a professor at Syracuse and then in energy consulting. In 2005, he wanted to return to work at a university, and he jumped at the chance to work at ASU, he said.
Since he joined the University in 2005, ASU has proven that the New American University is a workable model for a university, he said.
“The most important thing that’s happened since 2005 is that we’ve moved out of the experimental phase and demonstrated that the model can work and be effective,” he said.
Shangraw said Crow’s personal character is integral to his pursuit of the New American University.
Personal experiences such as moving around a lot with his Navy-enlisted father, attending college on a scholarship and seeing the need for better access to quality education at Columbia have all been influential for Crow, Shangraw said.
“I think you have to look at him personally to understand why he’s so committed to this,” he said. “For him, it’s a very personal mission to accomplish these goals.”
He said Crow’s model is ultimately student-oriented, and its success is dictated by student outcomes.
“In the end, we’re only going to be successful in the extent that those elements of the New American University are helpful to students,” Shangraw said.
The next step will be extending the model to other similar universities, he said, adding that there are already some schools, such as University of Central Florida, who have adopted some of the concepts.
“There are places like that that you can begin to put your finger on,” he said. “I think in the end what you’ll see is a lot of people doing the things we started here, but they’ll call it something else.”
Crow said in an email that his idea for the New American University came from his experiences as a student, educator and administrator.
The major issue he wanted to address was a persistent belief in academia that broad access cannot be paired with academic excellence, he said.
It is important to him to disprove that belief so that a wide variety of students can return that knowledge to their communities to create improvements, he said.
“Helping to create learning, living and working environments that support and produce these kinds of thought leaders is meaningful to me, and I am humbled to be part of ASU’s evolution,” Crow said. “I am proud of what we have achieved together so far and excited to continue its ascension as one of the top public research universities in the world.”
Reach the reporter at ammedeir@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @amy_medeiros
