Crowley leaves behind 23-year legacy at UNR

Sandra Chereb

Friday, Dec. 29, 2000 | 3:48 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - New Year's Day marks a new beginning for University of Nevada, Reno President Joe Crowley as he leaves behind a legacy spanning more than two decades at the helm of the state's oldest university.

Crowley, 67, steps down as UNR president Sunday after nearly 23 years in the job, a feat almost unheard of and rarely achieved in the hierarchy of higher academics.

"Twenty-three years is long enough for somebody to do a job like this," he said. "Most people last about 5 years."

Under his watch, about half the buildings on campus were built; enrollment grew from 7,800 to about 13,000; budgeted faculty increased more than 35 percent; and funds for research and development jumped from less than $10 million to more than $70 million a year.

Now, he says, "It's time to go."

When he announced his decision in June, the soft-spoken Crowley was overcome with emotion. Since then, he has relished his final presidential tasks while looking eagerly toward the future.

"I've been doing a lot of things for the last time," he said in a recent interview. I sensed it was going to be a difficult row to hoe. But it hasn't been.

"The hardest part was making the announcement," he said. "I woke up the next morning and I felt liberated."

In the whirlwind of the past few weeks, he increasingly has looked forward to "getting to the other side of Dec. 31," and a slower-paced existence with more time to spend with wife, four children, and especially his grandchildren.

Crowley will not be leaving altogether. He will serve as a lobbyist for the University and Community College System when the 2001 Legislature convenes in February. After that, he will take a six-month sabbatical before returning as a professor in January 2002.

Crowley joined UNR's political science faculty in 1966. He became department chairman 10 years later before being named acting president in February 1978. He was appointed on a permanent basis the next year.

University officials said Crowley is the longest serving president among the nation's principal public universities.

His tenure at the top has not been without conflict. He was caught up in a nasty brouhaha between regents and faculty in the early 1980s over personnel rules. More recently, UNR's $27 million Fire Science Academy in Carlin was shut down after only 18 months because of low enrollment, costs and environmental problems.

There was also the time in the late 1980s when he almost quit.

"I simply lost my passion for the job," Crowley reflected. He told the board he wanted to leave. They talked him into a six-month sabbatical instead.

He went to Oxford, where he spent his days reading in the library, writing a book and living a relaxed life with Joy, his wife of 39 years.

"I came back reinvigorated, he said. "Coincidentally, I've done another 11 years."

Even those who've sparred with him in the past hail Crowley's tenacity, demeanor, dedication - and admit he will be hard to replace.

Regent Steve Sisolak of Las Vegas, who has wrangled with Crowley over perceived funding disparities between the university campuses in Reno and Las Vegas, said Crowley "assured that UNR got all that it was entitled and maybe a little bit more."

"I don't think he ever did anything with the idea of hurting another institution," he said, but "Joe always made sure UNR got a good bit of the extra piece."

The longtime president, he said, will be difficult to replace.

"Joe Crowley is to UNR what Vince Lombardi was to the Green Bay Packers," he said. "Nobody will ever fill those shoes in the same way.

"Joe and I have not seen eye to eye on issues, but I have the utmost respect for him," he said.

Political science professor Richard Siegel, who joined the faculty the same year as Crowley, called Crowley a man of "remarkable vision and action" whose accomplishments, to some degree, were made possible by his length in the position.

"He was a catalyst for transforming the university in research, in development and in a host of other ways while retaining the essence of the university that Joe and I arrived at in 1965-66," Siegel said.

"It's still a teaching college; still a place where faculty doors are open and classes are reasonably small."

Jannet Vreeland, an accounting professor and former chairman of the faculty senate, described Crowley as a "class act."

"Are there things I disagree with him? Absolutely," she said.

"I respect the man. I don't think he's perfect. He's human like the rest of us.

"His biggest strength is also his biggest weakness. He's incredibly loyal ... to long-term friends and colleagues," she said.

For his part, Crowley is most proud of efforts to bring the land grant institution into modern times with a renewed emphasis on public service.

Created by Congress during the Civil War era, land grant universities were established to make higher learning available to the masses and provide resources to help solve community problems.

The result was programs such as 4-H and cooperative extension to serve a largely agrarian society.

But times changed.

"When people began moving from the rural areas ... land grant universities were slow to recognize this because they were so attached to agriculture," he said. "We needed to reach out to people in the cities.

"This was my self-imposed task," he said.

"What I wanted to do was move cooperative extension out from agriculture so it was ... related to agriculture but related to every other college, too," he said.

Today, he said, the program maintains its agricultural roots, but also deals with other social problems, such as nutrition, unwed mothers, gangs, violence and economics.

"That was my dream when I started," Crowley said. "It took a hell of a long time. Outreach is a most important task of this institution. And I think we got there, finally."