From normal school to New American University: A history of the ASU Foundation, 1885-2012

from normal school to New American University a history of the Arizona State University Foundation

1885-2012

from normal school to

New American University a history of the

Arizona State University Foundation

1885-2012

table of contents 6

introduction

R.F. “Rick” Shangraw Jr.

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foreword

Grady Gammage Jr.

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chapter 1 • •

generosity or grandstanding?

The “Thieving Thirteenth” Community support builds

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chapter 2 private support steps up • A principal comes to Tempe Normal • The Bulldog Boosters are born • Grady Gammage takes the reins

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chapter 3 brainstorming • A blustery nor’easter • A foundation is built • Plans for membership

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chapter 4 establishing the establishment • From state college to state university • Kathryn Gammage’s emergence

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chapter 5 early major gifts • A Renaissance man • Quietly cultivating friends

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chapter 6 bearing fruit • The Herbergers arrive • Litchfield College • Harry Newburn for president

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chapter 7 Miller time • Fundraising in name only • Expanding athletics • Cracks in solidarity

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chapter 8 the Castle Hot Springs dilemma • 400,000 gallons at 120 degrees • The slap heard ‘round the campus

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chapter 9 out of the blue • A new director of development • Deep affection for the foundation • Castle Hot Springs: sold chapter 10 did you say $75 million?

• President Nelson and the “Campaign for ASU” • 35,000 students have needs • Kax dives in

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chapter 17 • • •

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toward a more effective partnership Autonomy: opportunity and peril Changing the philanthropic climate “Premier volunteer organization”

chapter 18 • • •

anatomy of a fundraising miracle Total immersion A campaign about people Prospects wooed

chapter 11 • • •

the strategic plan for the 1990s Coor returns to his roots Three-prong plan Directors’ guidebook

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chapter 12 new home, new image • Banking on the foundation • $100 million in assets

a defining moment ASU Campaign for Leadership A march toward greatness A loss of time and money Great teachers, students, communities

132 chapter 15

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a great lady passes For 46 years a beacon of light “A wise housemother”

they labored behind the scenes Dreaming impossible dreams One percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration

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chapter 20 a New American University • Seeking Michael Crow • Weatherup chairs the foundation • A new generation of donors

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chapter 21 a golden decade • “Help us shape the future” • Critical to the university mission • Building greatness • Solutions@ASU

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acknowledgements

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photo credits

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about the authors

120 chapter 14

• • • •

chapter 19 • •

116 chapter 13

• •

new life for Old Main The case for restoration The honors college comes to campus

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136 chapter 16

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the best triple-a team in America Attracting “franchise” faculty Determined to be the best

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introduction

When asked about his groundbreaking successes in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and other scientific fields, Sir Isaac Newton answered, “I have stood upon the shoulders of giants,” justly giving credit to the work and achievements of those who had come before him.

The ASU Foundation for A New American University can easily make the same claim — the incredible success and growth of one of Arizona’s oldest and most respected nonprofit organizations is the direct result of our standing on the shoulders of educational pioneers who came before us, and of those who today continue the transformative advancement of Arizona State University.

This book is a tribute to the men and women whose vision, innovation and entrepreneurship led to the creation of ASU and a model for meaningful higher education in Arizona in 1885. It also recognizes those giants who have since taken this seedling of what was once the Territorial Normal School and nurtured it, grown it into one of this country’s largest and most acclaimed public research universities.

I hope you enjoy this journey through the history of the ASU Foundation as much as I have. Reading through these pages and considering the historical and more recent photos that document the fantastic growth of this university have been rewarding reminders of how critical to our success have been the unselfish and dedicated efforts of faculty, staff and students to make a real difference in our society, to tackle the great challenges before us, to be the discoverers of creative and scientific solutions, to ask foundational questions and to welcome risk and innovation.

These accomplishments, these monumental steps forward, also have been taken by those who have placed their ultimate trust in this university, whether as a normal school, a state college or the great university it is today. These are our great contributors, the selfless and generous community leaders who have shared their visionary philanthropy since 1885. It has been my privilege since coming to ASU in 2005, and during my service as CEO of the ASU Foundation, to work closely and know so many of those whose legacies have been permanently cemented, and those who continue to make an indelible impact on the ground-breaking work that has been done, and is being done, at Arizona State University.

The shoulders of giants. The undertaking that produced this book is important.

In these pages we preserve the history and document the progress that led to the transformation of Arizona State University and inspired a new generation of believers. This is the story of a university that grew from a small patch of donated land to an institute providing academic excellence, the broadest possible access and meaningful societal impact. What was once the challenge of bringing quality higher education to this great state has led to a focus on the future — how we embrace it, how we shape it, and how we change it for generations to come.

That focus has only sharpened since Michael Crow became ASU’s 16th president in 2002. His captivating vision for this university as a New American University — one that measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes — can be seen across all campuses, innovation centers and research parks. It can be seen in growth — an endowment that has grown 140 percent from $206 million at the beginning of July 2002 to more than $500 million in June 2012; total assets that have increased 153 percent from $313 million to $792 million; the $132 million that has been raised by the foundation for student scholarships since 2002; and the $64 million generated in support of endowed faculty over the same time.

As proud as we are of Arizona State University and the foundation’s role in building the excellence, access and impact that are the hallmarks of a New American University, we know that, ultimately, this is your university, one built for you, one that will forever be a good neighbor, an economic engine and a discoverer of solutions to the great challenges we face. We know your support over more than 100 years has made all the difference in our success and growing reputation.

For that, we thank you. For that, our community — one that is increasingly global —thanks you.

Finally I want to recognize and thank Lonnie Ostrom, who, as president of the foundation from 1982 through 2005, felt so strongly that the foundation’s story was an important one to tell that he commissioned the writing of this book.

Without Lonnie’s deep and abiding belief in Arizona State University and the ASU Foundation, such a story could not be told.

R.F. “Rick” Shangraw Jr., Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer ASU Foundation for A New American University

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foreword

Before Arizona State was the “New American University,” before it was a multicampus institution with one of the largest enrollments in the U.S., before it was consistently touted as one of the great educational and research platforms in the world, it was a scrappy little teacher’s college in a scruffy little Arizona town.

Unlike many of the great private universities of the U.S., ASU had no Leland Stanford or James Buchanan Duke ready with a vast fortune to push it toward greatness. Nor did it have — like the University of Arizona and many other public universities — the government largesse of the Morrill Act to endow it with a huge tract of land and the title of “university” from birth. Instead, it started with an extraordinary gift from a Tempe family of nearly everything it had to create a site for a territorial normal school. That act of stunning generosity

by George and Martha Wilson presaged something special: a kind of broadbased and democratic (small “d”) devotion to a university for Greater Phoenix.

This book is the story of that devotion. It is the story of countless individuals who bonded with that scrappy little teacher’s college and literally willed it to succeed.

In the early 1950s Maricopa County was a great farming center, but the science of agriculture was taught in Pima County, which had little farming. So a group of Phoenix-area business leaders formed the Agriculture Council, at one point even pledging their own land, so that agricultural education could be supported locally. In the late 50s Phoenix was poised to become a huge metropolis but had no university. A group of students, alumni and civic boosters took on the state legislature and asked the voters of Arizona to take matters directly into their own hands and rename the institution as Arizona State University. From the roots of the Agriculture Council the Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University was born. From the dizzying success of the “Name Change” campaign was created a university for the foundation to support.

Raising donations for public institutions can be a tricky proposition. This was especially the case in the early days of the ASU Foundation when ASU didn’t have a large, well-heeled alumni base. Nor was it simple to build support in a place where everyone came from somewhere else, where loyalties often remained in the place they left, and where a strong streak of libertarian independence created very few permanent institutions. Yet ASU’s boosters found a toehold among the transplanted citizens of Arizona who wanted their adopted place to become something special.

It was nearly 25 years ago, in the midst of an economic downturn, when I wrote another foreword to a book about ASU: Dean Smith’s biography of Grady Gammage. I mused then about the sometimes fragile insecurity of our life in the desert and the institutions we have created to make this place hospitable. All these years later, in another economic recession, that insecurity is still manifest in the way we think about Arizona. Is this place based on anything beyond cheap land and sunshine? Is the economy sufficiently diversified? Is it getting too hot to live here? Is Phoenix “sustainable”?

It is not happenstance that all these questions are today being asked at ASU. The “New American University,” as President Michael Crow has envisioned it, is all about the relationship between the community and the academy, about relevance, about responsiveness and resilience, about sustainability, about the future.

When the precursor to the ASU Foundation was born in the early 1950s around my parents’ dining table the citizens they gathered there knew it was important to the future of the university to have community support. They may even have anticipated a time when the legislature would begin to withdraw tax dollars that would need to be replaced. I doubt even that group of prescient Phoenicians could have known how Arizona State University would come to be the single most significant institution in the economic life of the “Valley of the Sun.” That’s asking a lot of a scrappy little teacher’s college and the people who love it. But not too much.

Grady Gammage Jr. Senior Research Fellow, ASU Morrison Institute for Public Policy Member, Trustees of ASU ASU Foundation for A New American University

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chapter one

chapter one

generosity or grandstanding?

The “Thieving Thirteenth,” illustration by Bob ‘Boze’ Bell

The infamous “Thieving Thirteenth” Arizona Territorial Legislature’s last hurrah was almost as notorious as its members. On that final day of its existence, March 11, 1885, the group was feeling uncharacteristically magnanimous with its allocations, although history doubts genuine altruistic motivations.

Several of its members were still basking in an alcoholic haze after an unprecedented series of parties financed by freespending lobby groups. Others were looking forward with high anticipation to returning home to warmer weather after a winter month in mile-high Prescott, the territorial capital.

This rollicking band of hard-drinking, street-fighting lawmakers has gone down in history for spending more than 10 times their allotted operational budget; for hiring relatives and “lady friends” as clerks; for buying favorable media coverage by shoveling huge sums to newspaper editors; and for appropriating unconscionable amounts of money for everything from railroads to a new insane asylum to bridges — the list was endless. So angry were their constituents that legislative leaders were later called before two grand juries to answer for their actions. Only one of its members was able to win election to the 14th Legislature.

The original first page of House Bill No. 164, an act by the Thirteenth Territorial Legislature establishing theTerritorial Normal School

But on that day in 1885 they were in a munificent mood, enough to appropriate still more public funds to establish two institutions of higher learning — a teachers college in Tempe and a university in Tucson. Quite an amazing action, when one considers there was not a single high school in the territory at the time.

The townspeople of Tucson had raised several thousand dollars to persuade lawmakers to move the territorial capital back to Tucson or, failing that, to win a major appropriation of some kind

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Chapter One - Generosity or Grandstanding?

for their city. To their way of thinking, obtaining a university was not even an adequate consolation prize.

Indeed, it would be six years before they got around to opening the university’s doors. C.C. Stephens, Tucson’s eminent legislative leader, bore the brunt of the town’s displeasure. In a hastily called public meeting in the Old Pueblo, he tried to explain to the angry crowd the future benefits the university would bring, but he was showered by over-ripe vegetables and a dead cat before he could finish.

Up north, Salt River Valley citizens took a more enlightened view of their prize, the Territorial Normal School, a training school for teachers in Tempe.

Charles Trumbull Hayden, founder of the town and one of the prominent movers of the normal school bid, agreed with Representative John S. Armstrong of Tempe that it was “time to bring home the normal school,” declaring it would be a wonderful force for good in the community.

Armstrong turned down an opportunity to get the insane asylum and its $100,000 appropriation, and battled instead, successfully, for the normal school, which was given only $5,000 for a building and $3,500 for all expenses in its first two years.

Not only was the appropriation less than generous, but the legislature decreed that the 20 acres of land for the new institution must be donated by private citizens — and that donation must be made within 60 days from March 12 or the deal was off. Among the legislators who voted for the normal school bill on 12

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George and Martha Wilson’s generous gift of 15 acres, and the citizens of Tempe’s subscription for five acres of the Wilsons’ farmland, set the stage for the future of ASU.

Opening day of Territorial Normal School, Feb. 8, 1886

Charles Trumbull Hayden

that final day of the session, there must have been a number who did so with the firm conviction that Tempe could never meet those conditions, and therefore the school never would be built.

The stage was set for the appearance of the future Arizona State University’s first major private donors: George and Martha Wilson.

On Jan. 4, 1885, Charles Hayden had summoned his neighbors to a meeting before the opening session of the legislature, asking them to dig deep for enough money to buy the necessary land for the normal school. They did their best, but Tempe folk were far from wealthy and could come up with only $500 — certainly not enough to buy 20 acres in Tempe, even in those pioneer days. The going rate was at least $100 per acre, and the well-situated pasture belonging to the Wilsons probably was worth considerably more. It was that pasture, located just south of today’s University Drive, and bounded

by College, Normal and Orange streets, that town leaders chose as the ideal site for the new school.

The Wilsons were not rich by any stretch of the imagination. They operated a small butcher shop in town and pastured their cattle on the 20 acres in preparation for butchering. Without their pasture they could not continue in business, but at the urging of their neighbors they accepted $500 as payment for five acres. Efforts to raise the money to buy the remaining 15 acres of Wilson land were unsuccessful, and the purchase deadline was rapidly approaching.

Panic set in as the town leaders searched frantically for a solution.

Alfred Thomas Jr. and Ernest J. Hopkins, in their book “The Arizona State University Story,” told what happened next: ASU Foundation for A New American University

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Chapter One - Generosity or Grandstanding?

“When the Wilsons learned of their town’s dilemma, they consented to part with their whole pasture. After all, they were loyal Tempeans. What this pioneer couple did, specifically, was to take $500 for the original five acres and ‘throw in’ the other fifteen as an endowment. The tradition says they gave up their life’s achievement without a shrug.”

In the university archives there is a deed dated May 5, 1885, only a week inside the 60-day time limit, in which the Wilsons conveyed 15 of their 20 acres of land “for the sole and exclusive use of the Territorial Normal School forever, in consideration of the sum of five hundred dollars.”

Without that courageous gift the normal school would not have been built, and Arizona State University would have died with barely a whimper. To show its appreciation, the board allowed George Wilson to pasture some of his cattle on the land for several years. But four years after the land was deeded over, Martha Wilson died and the butcher shop was sold not long thereafter. George was then hired by the Normal School as its custodian, and he worked in that capacity until his death 25 years later.

As Arizona State University’s first sacrificial donor, Wilson was honored in 1956 when Arizona State College President Grady Gammage and the Arizona Board of Regents bestowed on its newest women’s residence facility the name George W. Wilson Hall.

Now came a parade of community supporters of Tempe’s new teacher training institution.

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Normal School library second floor of Old Main, 1907

Seventh Normal President Arthur John Matthews, Homecoming 1929; Matthews served ASU for approximately 30 years and 18 buildings were constructed under his presidency.

Charles Hayden and Jack Armstrong, whose efforts had been primarily responsible for the school’s creation, continued to lend their moral and financial support and to urge their neighbors to do likewise. Hayden accepted the post of president of the normal school governing board and Judge Joseph Campbell of Phoenix not only served on the board but helped rally the support of influential Maricopa County leaders.

There was J. H. Creighton, recognized as the leading architect in Phoenix, who drew up the plans for the original normal school building and submitted a token bill of only $150. And there was contractor S. E. Patton, whose low bid for the construction was $1,500 more than the $5,000 authorized by the legislature, but who agreed to proceed with the job anyway. (The territorial auditor later refused Patton’s claim for reimbursement, and many months passed before he eventually received his money.)

The four-room building, which was just south of present-day Old Main, but long since torn down, was scheduled for formal opening on Feb. 6, 1886, but there was one unforeseen problem: Nobody had remembered to provide toilet facilities for the 31 students who had enrolled. So Hayden, as he had before and would again in the future, came to the rescue of the school. He dispatched a crew of his mill workers to the scene and they erected two wooden privies at the rear of the school just in time for the opening ceremony.

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Chapter One - Generosity or Grandstanding?

The Territorial Normal School’s first principal, classical scholar Hiram Bradford Farmer, was faced with several seemingly insurmountable problems. First, there were no supplies on hand — not even a piece of chalk. There were no faculty members to teach the eager students, nor was staff in place to operate the school. And there were no dormitories to house enrollees who came from out of town.

Farmer used his ingenuity, his persuasive powers and a lot of his own money to solve each problem. He bought and borrowed books and supplies, taught the entire curriculum himself and enlisted student volunteers to take care of maintenance chores. As for the dormitory problem, he and his wife took a number of female students into their home on what is now Farmer Avenue; the Farmers arranged for neighbors to do the same.

A tax-supported institution? That’s what the forerunner of Arizona State University was called by the legislature.

Farmer, Wilson, Hayden and a number of others must have had a good laugh about that.

Hiram Bradford Farmer was the Territorial Normal School’s first teacher and principal.

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Second principal Robert Lindley Long, who served from 1888-90, started with a depleted supply of chalk.

Mrs. Swiggett (Ida Warren), the normal school’s first married student, ca. 1896

chapter two

private support steps up

Edgar Storment

The Arizona Territorial Normal School was an almost-forgotten orphan during its first decade. The state capital was in Prescott until 1889, which meant territorial officials were too far away, more than 100 miles of hard-scrabble horse trail, to pay much attention to the institution. Even after the seat of government moved to Phoenix, Salt River Valley civic leaders were barely aware of the school. It was a long buggy ride from Phoenix to Tempe, and few people of importance bothered to make the trip.

A 1901 class portrait shows Old Main and the original Normal School building before it was razed five years later

The first normal school principal to look very far beyond the campus for assistance was a remarkable young man — barely 27 years of age — named Edgar Storment. He had come to the normal school two years before as assistant to principal Dayton Reed, and was chosen to take Reed’s place in 1892.

Before his arrival in Tempe, Storment taught at a rural school called Agua Caliente, just south of the Gila River, a community so tough and lawless that the fledgling educator kept a revolver in his desk and often demonstrated his prowess with the weapon at lunch time as a warning to unruly students.

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Chapter Two - Private Support Steps Up

Storment, despite his youth, already had experienced his share of difficult times on the Arizona frontier. It was good that he had, because he faced almost as bleak a financial and operational situation at the school as had Hiram Bradford Farmer and the two principals who had followed him. Except for a $200 appropriation to start a school library and $300 to plant trees and pay for some landscaping, there had been little help from the legislature.

Storment was a visionary, a man who dreamed of a great new three-story brick palace to house the school. He not only dreamed of it, but he drew up the first plans for the building himself. The pistol-packing principal launched a small program of athletics, starting with a baseball team that carried the normal school “N” into competition for the first time. He took the school’s first feeble steps toward journalism studies, persuading the Tempe News to devote a page each week to stories written by the school’s students about campus activities.

Perhaps as important as any of these efforts was his launching of the school’s first alumni association in 1894. In a letter to graduates — he wrote that they “now number nearly a score” — he invited them to the campus on June 2 to form the association. James McClintock of the first graduating class was elected president and Mary Wingar was chosen as secretary.

Arizona State Teachers College Bulldogs savoring a victory over the NAU Lumberjacks, 1933 20

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McClintock, who would win fame as a hero of the Spanish-American War and for his service as state historian, was honored a century later by the people of Tempe with the naming of a high school and major city thoroughfare in his honor.

So was born the ASU Alumni Association — a social club and booster association in its early years, but eventually an effective engine for raising money and assisting the university in a thousand other ways.

Two years later, in 1896, the normal school was given a new moniker: Tempe Normal School of Arizona.

During the 1930s the Tempe-based Bulldog Boosters provided some financial assistance for the athletic programs of the college, and in 1946, just before the changing of the school mascot from Bulldogs to Sun Devils, the fundraising Sun Angels came into being.

Mal Straus, a long-time Phoenix businessman was among the founders of the Sun Angels — the sixth member of its board of directors.

“We (the Sun Angels) were embarrassed by the showing of Arizona State’s football team in 1946,” said Strauss. “That was the year the University of Arizona beat them 67-0, so we decided to band together with other local business and professional people to provide some financial assistance to the Arizona State College athletic programs. Later, we gave a lot of money for academics, too.”

Composed of many of Phoenix’s most prominent business and professional leaders, the Sun Angels brought new public awareness to and increased the stature of the growing school.

In support of both athletics and academics, the group would grow into a collective of passionate boosters who contributed many millions of dollars over more than a half century to what would become Arizona State University.

Gradually, the idea of private financial support for a public institution — once so foreign to the thinking of many Arizonans — took hold and grew.

It was not until Grady Gammage was appointed president of Arizona State Teachers College in 1933 that the school of some 800 students started seriously reaching out to the surrounding community and the state of Arizona for help in achieving its increasingly ambitious goals.

Tempe State Teachers College Bulldogs baseball team, 1929-30

The Sun Angel Foundation was founded and organized in 1946 to support athletics.

Eventually the philanthropic group funded scholarships for academic achievement.

Gammage had come to Arizona only a few months after it became the country’s 48th state in 1912, seeking to recover from tuberculosis.

As soon as his health permitted, he enrolled at the University of Arizona and upon graduation served as a teacher and administrator in Winslow. He was chosen as president of the teachers college at Flagstaff in 1926, where he displayed the leadership qualities that later won him his post at the Tempe college.

Students on a camping trip, 1930s

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Chapter Two - Private Support Steps Up

He found his new assignment to be a daunting one.

In that bleak Depression year of 1933 there was hardly enough money for survival, let alone growth.

The physical plant was in deplorable condition, faculty morale was worse and the state legislature for a time considered shutting down one of the two teachers colleges to save money. But Mr. Gammage (he did not earn his doctorate until 1940) was determined to forge ahead. He bulldozed his reluctant governing board into backing the launch of a building program, financed primarily by Depression-era federal funding, but aided by community labor and financial contributions.

A student activity center (today’s Moeur Building, named in honor of Benjamin Baker Moeur who served as the official physician for Arizona State Teachers College, and served two terms as governor of Arizona), classrooms, a dormitory and even the college’s first concrete football arena, Goodwin Stadium, emerged, much to the amazement of Arizonans who never thought the Tempe school would amount to much.

World War II interrupted Gammage’s ambitious planning for four years, but as the end of the conflict approached, he was ready to resume his push for new academic excellence, new buildings and a bright new public image for the institution. In the spring of 1945 he and his newly recruited supporters in the legislature succeeded in dropping “teachers” from the name of the college he envisioned as an institution with a much loftier academic stature. His persistent pushing and driving began to alarm the administration and supporters of the University of Arizona, who until that time had held nearly absolute sway in the realm of Arizona higher education.

Tempe Normal School’s first marching band on the steps of Old Main, 1915

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Student body officers, 1934

On more than one occasion, Tucson newspapers complained editorially that Gammage would not be satisfied until he had transformed his college into a university. They were right.

On March 14 of that year, Arizona Governor Sidney Osborn approved the new name: Arizona State College.

President Gammage made one of the shrewdest moves of his illustrious career in 1947 when he instructed the college business manager, Gilbert Cady, to invite James W. Creasman back to the campus to become the first full-time secretary of the Arizona State College Alumni Association.

Creasman, a 1935 graduate, was living with his family in New York City at the time, and was serving on the broadcasting staff of Voice of America. A little man with a big, magnificent voice and a winning personality, he had been president of the student body his senior year, won an Army commission in World War II, saw action in Europe and was steadily gaining stature in his chosen field of radio broadcasting. It seemed highly unlikely he would leave New York’s glitter and promise to accept a low-paying job in an unfamiliar field at a small Arizona college.

But he did.

“Dorothy and I agonized over the decision for a long time,” Creasman recalled many years later. “One evening after we had agreed we should come back, we were walking down a New York street with my letter of acceptance, wondering if we should drop it into the mail box. At last, the overriding factor was that we just didn’t want to raise our children in that huge city. So I mailed the letter and in a short time we were on our way back home.”

This black and white plat identifies the structures that made up Tempe Normal School in 1907.

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Students plant ivy at Old Main in 1923, carrying on a tradition started by the class of 1901.

Creasman learned upon his arrival that he would be starting his new job from virtually the first step. The ASTC Alumni Association had not been active for years, and the only records or addresses of graduates in its possession were on cards in a shoe box. With a sigh, he peeled off his coat and tie and went to work.

During the next quarter century he built the association into an effective force for institutional support, headed important fundraising campaigns and later was hailed by thousands of grateful alumni as “Mr. ASU.” Upon his retirement in 1984 he was given an honorary doctorate by his alma mater and remained active as field announcer for the Sun Devil Marching Band past his 80th birthday.

President Gammage made another equally important move in late 1947 when he acted on a request by the college’s agriculture department faculty and 24

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assembled a group of influential Arizona farmers and businessmen to assist in the development of agricultural facilities at the college. Known as the Agriculture Advisory Council, it was an effective support group for the institution for nearly a decade.

The council was the parent organization of what is today the ASU Foundation for A New American University, and some of its inaugural members became pillars of the foundation. In its early years, it was primarily an advisory group. The council’s labors as a fundraising body did not attract much attention until the early 1950s when its importance peaked.

Records of agriculture council activity date back only as far as May 2, 1951.

Gammage persuaded some of Arizona’s most influential men to serve on the council.

It took some doing, but he was able to get board and council members working toward the advancement of the college.

Chapter Two - Private Support Steps Up

Several of the group’s leaders had been faithful friends of the college for years. Prominent attorney Sid Moeur had served as the alumni association president and was instrumental in obtaining war surplus trailers and housing for Victory Village, the married students’ community for returning World War II veterans and young faculty and their families, which stood on the present-day site of ASU Gammage Auditorium. Earl Recker, a big-time produce grower and shipper, provided summer jobs for student-athletes. M.O. Best and John Jacobs, well-known members of the Arizona Board of Regents, answered President Gammage’s call for advice and assistance on many occasions. John Sandige, a Phoenix realtor and former alumni association president, headed the 1944–45 drive to upgrade the Tempe teachers college to its broader academic status. Almost all the other council members provided help in one way or another to the struggling college.

The agriculture council had one primary goal: to obtain land for the college farm, a teaching and research facility that had outgrown its space near the campus.

Because of the board of regents’ recalcitrance and University of Arizona concerns that the dominance of its college of agriculture might be threatened by ASC ambitions, there was no money available for buying such an expensive piece of real estate. The chairman of the agriculture department had recommended that a minimum of half a section (320 acres) was necessary for the department’s use.

Victory Village comprised trailers, Quonset hut-type buildings and barracks that were converted to apartments in the 1940s.

What to do?

The council made a bold decision to pledge the credit of its members to pay for the land, and hoped the state legislature would eventually grant funds to reimburse them. Members of the council spent many months scouting suitable acreages that might be available. On April 30, 1956, the council board received a letter from land broker Loyal C. Stahl of Phoenix, suggesting that the Jones Ranch — 320 acres bounded by Price, Elliot and Warner roads southeast of Tempe — could be purchased for $350,000.

After long negotiations the council agreed to buy the property and present it to what had now become Arizona State College. To make the purchase council members had to take a spectacular leap of faith and pledge their own money for collateral to obtain a loan from Valley National Bank.

This June 13, 1958, letter by ASC Foundation President J.C. Wetzler attempts to secure funding from Valley National Bank for land near the new Sun Devil Stadium.

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Chapter Two - Private Support Steps Up

“I’ll never forget the evening I came home from a meeting of the agriculture group and told my wife I had pledged $5,000 for a loan to buy farm land for Arizona State College,” McMullin later would recall with a wry smile. “She almost went into shock. We had just paid $9,000 for a new house, and that seemed like a lot of money to us in those days.”

Luckily for the board members (and their matrimonial tranquility) the legislature later approved the necessary money.

It was the first major land acquisition for the institution made possible by private support since George Wilson’s cow pasture gift in 1885. The college farm was an important educational asset for many years, as well as the site of countless faculty and staff social events. More than a century later, the land would be occupied by a much more sophisticated and technologically renowned institution: the Arizona State University Research Park.

It was in 1950 that Gammage and his aides expanded a student initiative that had begun as a fundraising effort to honor military veterans, launching an official campaign to construct a student union building. Here, students, faculty and staff could take their meals, conduct meetings, relax in the lounge and enjoy bowling and other recreational facilities.

The state legislature voted $400,000 for the project, but that was not nearly enough. Another $350,000 had to be raised before construction could start.

Venerable Senator Carl Hayden, a member of the normal school class of 1896, agreed to be honorary chairman of the fund drive, and Phoenix newspaper publisher Charles Stauffer, class of ‘01, was named chairman. But the major energy and thrust behind the project was 26

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provided by Creasman and volunteers John B. Mills, Walter Bimson, Joe Lanser, Martin Wist, W.W. Knorpp and Hugh Gruwell. These were some of Phoenix’s most powerful leaders, and they served on the fund-drive board along with agriculture council stalwarts Best, Jacobs and Moeur. Horace Griffen, alumni association president, rallied the old grads, and ASC faculty members did their part.

Now a new name — that of Edward M. Carson — emerged. Carson was student body president that year and teamed with his vice president, future U.S. Congressman Bob Stump, to get students actively involved. Carson later would become CEO of First Interstate Bank and a key member of the ASU Foundation board.

Another future ASU Foundation pillar, Kathryn K. Gammage, first demonstrated her remarkable leadership ability in that fundraising drive. She and Grady Gammage had been married late in 1949, after the 1948 death of his first wife, Dixie. “Kay,” as she became known to thousands of Arizonans, would play a key role in the great 1958 “name change” campaign to gain university status for Arizona State University.

ASC reflected the growth occurring throughout Arizona, which opened two airports — in Tucson and Flagstaff — in 1948 and began building Interstate 17 in 1955.

With all that community clout and campus spirit behind it, the Memorial Student Union campaign roared to a successful conclusion, raising $439,000 in less than three years.

A humorous footnote to that chapter in ASU fundraising history: Valley Bank President Bimson mailed a check for $25,000 to Creasman, who jubilantly made his way to Gammage’s office and those of other administration leaders, waving the check in triumph. When he returned to his office, he placed the check in its Valley Bank envelope and left it on the desk of his secretary, Harriet Olson. He went to retrieve it a short time later, only to find it had mysteriously disappeared.

“I was panic stricken!” he later declared. “We turned that office upside down and I retraced my steps around the campus, but without result. I couldn’t imagine having to call Mr. Bimson and tell him I had lost his check, and was even considering taking out a $25,000 loan to repay the money myself. Then, we had an inspiration: could it have been tossed into a waste basket? Harriet pawed through her basket and found the Bimson envelope, which she had thought was empty. Inside was the precious check, which soon would have been picked up with the trash and burned.

The pain of that four-hour search, and my relief when it ended, burns in my memory.”

In autumn of 1954 a report by the Ernest Hollis Commission — a study of Arizona higher education — was discussed in a meeting of the Arizona Board of Regents in Tucson. The Hollis report recommended, among other things, that Arizona State College at Tempe be granted virtual university status, with colleges of liberal arts, education, applied arts and sciences, and business administration.

Further, it noted that the college was “rapidly becoming a university.”

Aerial view of Tempe campus toward the south, 1939 ASU Foundation for A New American University

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Chapter Two - Private Support Steps Up

The report had been widely circulated and had generated fiery opposition from supporters of the University of Arizona, who saw in it a frightening threat to their institution’s dominance in state higher education. That opposition boiled over again in the regents meeting in Tucson, and tempers flared. After long and heated debate, regents President John Babbitt called for a vote. The tally was four in favor, four against. Arizona Governor Howard Pyle then rose to cast the deciding ballot: aye — in favor of the Hollis recommendation.

By a 5–4 margin, the board announced its agreement with the Hollis report and next heard a motion by regent (and Arizona State alum) Lynn Laney to change the college name to designate it “some sort of university,” but protests by regents favoring the University of Arizona caused the consideration of the motion to be postponed.

But, Arizona State College was on its way to becoming a university. The battle to achieve the name raged, incredibly, for four more years, during which time the state legislature refused to make it official. At last President Gammage decided to organize a statewide initiative campaign for Proposition 200 to be placed on the November 1958 ballot renaming the institution “Arizona State University.” It was a huge gamble and nobody realized more than he that defeat at the polls could doom the renaming for many years.

Creasman was put in charge of the campaign, which was officially chaired by Phoenix attorney Walter Craig. Alumni and officials of both ASC and U of A toured the state, speaking for or against the proposition.

The issue so aroused public interest that an incredible 72 percent of the electorate turned out on Nov. 4 to cast their votes. The election-night throng at the ASC student union watched each new posting of results on a big board with bated breath, and at last

Students whitewash the “A” near the Tempe campus in 1950. The tradition began in the 1930s as part of orientation week.

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Members of the 1964 ASU team for the “GE College Bowl” television show sponsored by General Electric

broke into wild cheering when it became evident that Proposition 200 would not only pass, but would carry the state by a margin of 2-to-1. Of Arizona’s 14 counties, only Pima, Cochise and Santa Cruz, all in the far south, voted in opposition. A new era in the institution’s history had dawned and Arizona State University was on the move to take its place among the great public universities of America.

Meanwhile, Gammage and his staff were not content to wait for the name change to begin building ASC into a functioning university. Plans went forward for strengthening the four new colleges, and deans were named. This was particularly true of the College of Applied Arts and Sciences, which was already being envisioned as a college of engineering. Dan Noble had brought Motorola to the Valley of the Sun and other high-tech industrial corporations soon followed. They asked — even demanded — of the state legislature that the college at Tempe be granted permission to set up programs for training the new engineers they already needed. Noble even looked ahead and asked for masters’ and doctoral programs, which would be sought by young semiconductor and aerospace engineers being brought in by the hundreds.

Once again Gammage displayed his vision for

the future when, in a meeting of the Agriculture Advisory Council board, he announced there soon would be a pressing need for a computer center on the campus. Today’s gigantic Computing Commons at ASU had its origins in that meeting more than five decades ago.

As enrollment soared and nationally known faculty members were assembled in many academic disciplines, it became evident that radically increased public support of this booming young giant of a university was more and more necessary.

Demands for money were far exceeding the supply provided by the state legislature.

Though it had served loyally and effectively in its eight years of existence, the Agriculture Advisory Council was not able to meet the skyrocketing needs. Neither could the alumni association. Some kind of development office, staffed by the university to encourage and receive gifts, was required. Moreover, a formal organization of community leaders was urgently needed, reaching beyond agriculture and encompassing all areas of Arizona’s business and professional activity.

In 1955 the Arizona State College at Tempe Foundation came into being.

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chapter three

brainstorming George C. Yates blew onto the Arizona State College campus like a blustery nor’easter at the end of World War II, scattering the leaves of complacency and ruffling some feathers as he sounded his message of the need to change old ways and dream of a more glorious future for the college.

The fountain at Old Main was designed by WPA artist Emry Kopta in 1933 and built in stages during the mid- to late-1930s.

A tall, balding man with a stentorian voice, he came to Arizona suffering from asthma, an affliction that plagued him until his death. He exuded an air of authority and convinced many around him that he had the answers to almost any problem ASC might encounter. Yates was an idea man like nobody who had preceded him. If he usually moved on and left those ideas for somebody else to bring to reality, most people were willing to forgive him.

President Gammage had hired him as director of special services, and with reason: Yates was a multi-purpose man for the seasons — a professor of journalism, faculty sponsor of the student newspaper and yearbook, advisor to the university president and ambassador from ASC to the outside world.

Matthews Hall, built in 1918, is the oldest surviving dormitory building on the ASU Tempe campus.

It was Yates who made the first overture to Gammage to garner public support and raise money for Arizona State College.

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In a letter to the president dated Oct. 17, 1946, a few weeks after the first returning World War II veterans started to flood the campus, Yates discussed a gathering of the American Alumni Council which he had attended with Sidney B. Moeur, ASC alumni president and long-time supporter.

Yates told of a meeting with Stanford University’s alumni director, during which the feasibility of forming community support groups was explored. Stanford was planning to establish a foundation to increase financial support, Yates wrote, and he was eager to learn all he could about its plans.

A document listing the 1957 members of the ASC Tempe Agricultural Council

Yates’ suggestion took root in Gammage’s mind, and the organization of the Agriculture Advisory Council a few months later may well have had its impetus in that 1946 letter.

Valuable as the council of farmers and businessmen proved to be, Yates wanted something bigger and better. He studied the methods of foundations that were being established at other institutions and kept reminding Gammage that Arizona State needed such a resource.

He visualized a foundation as a tool for raising private money for capital structures, scholarships, endowments and special needs, as well as a means of bringing corporate and professional leaders closer to the college. In a memo to the president dated Aug. 25, 1953, he proposed an annual gift campaign and set a target of $100,000 a year. He wrote he had gone so far as to draw up incorporation papers for the Arizona State Foundation and was waiting for Gammage to turn him loose to get the project under way.

Shortly thereafter, Yates wrote to the president that he had met with Rex Staley of the First National Bank in Phoenix to discuss the matter.

Staley was willing to help solicit donations from area businessmen and, at Gammage’s request, he drew up a list of men he believed would join the effort to help the college.

Staley recounted later that Gammage invited him and several other business executives to a breakfast on the campus, consisting primarily of watery eggs and overdone bacon.

“The food was really awful,” Staley recollected. “Of course, there was no kitchen in the old gymnasium — the only place available to have a big meeting on the campus — and everything had to be carried over from the dining hall. I made a promise then and there that whenever President Gammage invited me to a meal, we would go somewhere else to eat.”

Chapter Three - Brainstorming

The primitive meeting facility and the quality of the food might have been a blessing in disguise. Certainly, it underscored the fact that the college needed money badly, and that the Phoenix community would have to help raise it.

At that breakfast meeting, Gammage emphasized one salient theme: that Phoenix’s ambitions to join the select company of great American cities could not be achieved until a university of national reputation was functioning in its midst.

The burgeoning semiconductor industry, for example, could not thrive without an excellent engineering college to train its personnel.

The arts and sciences would be hampered until professors and students of unusual merit were in the mix. And business could not achieve its goals without a strong business college that prepared future executives in both bachelor’s and advanced degree programs.

1950s-era students studying in Matthews Library. The facility closed in 1966 and 16 miles of books were transferred to the new Charles Trumbull Hayden Library.

Social studies teacher Rufus Wyllys instructing a class in Old Main, 1948

The message apparently came across. The business leaders present began to realize that their community’s self-interest lay in strengthening the only statesupported college in the area. Money — lots of it — was urgently needed for faculty support, scholarships, buildings, research and much more.

Many influential people were soon enlisted to get the job done. Several of the men who had led the Agriculture Advisory Council were particularly active. A foundation, with a board composed of well-known movers and shakers in banking, industry, ranching, business and the professions, was proposed. For several months, Gammage, Yates and ASC research coordinator George Boyd contacted professional fundraising companies to determine whether they might be brought in to lead a campaign.

Gammage decided, however, that it would be best to launch the new foundation without outside help. An organizing committee began its work and in a February 1955 memo Yates informed the president that the group “was getting pretty steamed up about the idea” and was about to make it a reality. Faithful alumnus Moeur drew up the articles of incorporation, which designated Creasman, the alumni secretary, as the “lawful agent” ASU Foundation for A New American University

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Chapter Three - Brainstorming

of the corporation and empowered him to act as the liaison agent between the Arizona State College at Tempe Foundation and the college.

The board of directors of the newly-created foundation signed the articles of incorporation in their first meeting on June 22, 1955; the date is still recognized as the birthday of today’s Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University.

Edward J. Demson, a retired attorney from Cleveland, was brought on board in January 1958 to serve as executive director of the foundation.

Demson also was legal advisor to President Gammage and was soon to become one of the teaching stars of ASU’s new television station.

His histrionics and droll sense of humor made his business law classes popular to the growing number of students who chose to earn credit via the TV.

the original board

ASC Foundation board minutes for a June 12, 1958, meeting

June 22, 1955, is recognized as the official birthdate of what is today the ASU Foundation for A New American University.

The original board included: M.O. Best, president J.C. Wetzler, vice president Don Stewart Earl Recker Orval Knox Sidney B. Moeur John Sandige John Dutton O.M. Lassen

Cecil Miller M.F. Wharton Kenneth McMicken Harry Bonsall Jr. John Thompson Lyle Trimble Dwight Patterson

Bryon Showers Rod McMullin E. Ray Crowden Allen Rosenberg Frank Gyberg Clyde Rowe Jess Watt

Gammage dispatched a letter to M.O. (Mack) Best, saying: “I want you to know the more I think about this entire (foundation) program, the more enthusiastic I become ... of course, we are all most grateful to you for the fine leadership you are giving the whole program.”

Before the summer had passed, Best suffered a heart attack and died.

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Wayne Wright J.V. Guerin

Foundation board members were stunned by his death, and expressed their sorrow in a meeting on October 6 at the Arizona Club in Phoenix. They sent Mrs. Best a letter memorializing their lost leader and expressing their gratitude for his long service to the college. Then they elected foundation Vice President J.C. Wetzler as their new president and Earl Recker as first vice president.

Mills was the CEO of Arizona’s biggest hotel, the Westward Ho in Phoenix, and a man of remarkable influence throughout the Southwest. Gruwell was Bimson’s counterpart in the First National Bank. And finally, foundation board members were careful to invite the top men in both of the state’s major energy companies: McMullin of Salt River Project and Lucking of Arizona Public Service.

Moeur made a motion to expand the board of directors, and the directors agreed to invite Wes Knorpp, Walter Bimson, Ray Cowden, Ken McMicken, John Mills, Hugh Gruwell, Walter Lucking and Rod McMullin to join the governing board. It would be difficult to imagine a more prominent group of community leaders than these, and all were destined to play important roles in the development of Arizona State University and its foundation.

“We were very fortunate in enlisting the leadership of these and so many other prominent Arizonans,” said Rex Staley, who joined the Agriculture Advisory Council in 1948 and later gave yeoman service to the foundation. “Mack Best was the king of the produce industry, a big hearty man who was everybody’s friend. John Jacobs, who had been recruited by Best, was another agricultural giant, although he was almost tiny in stature. O.D. Miller was a man who knew everybody, was elected to the legislature, made a lot of money in farming, and had a beautiful singing voice which he loved to show off at gatherings of all kinds.

Ray Cowden and Charlie Wetzler — what a wonderful pair of cattlemen. They were quiet, almost courtly, but they could loosen up among friends. And Don Stewart, who handled agricultural loans at First National Bank, was another quiet man who worked hard for the college in many instances.”

Knorpp, former co-publisher (with Charles Stauffer) of The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette, was a gruff, good-hearted, take-charge leader who relished a good verbal battle. Bimson was the CEO of Valley National Bank and a man revered throughout Arizona for his financial acumen and community spirit. Cowden and McMicken were prominent ranchers who had for several years demonstrated their devotion to the college.

Frank Gyberg, a well-known Yavapai County rancher and longtime member of the agriculture council, was soon named to the foundation’s board of directors.

His participation was important in that it demonstrated that support for the college was statewide and not limited to Maricopa County. Gyberg was not able to attend every board meeting, and he wrote a letter of apology to his friend Wetzler in 1957:

The ASU Farm Laboratory, a 320-acre farm on Elliot and Price roads in Tempe, allowed students to practice and participate in all phases of agricultural work.

“As for my lagging, as it may seem, interest in the college, under whatever name (the battle for the ASU name was still in the future), I am for it in a big way.

The state’s new prosperity requires it.”

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A group of elementary school students in 1953 admires the American Art Collection, which comprised 16 oil paintings donated by Oliver B. James, a New York City native. The collection later was expanded to include 145 works in various media by artists from the 18th through 20th centuries. Originally appraised at $125,000, today the collection is worth considerably more.

significant gift of paintings and other art objects, presented by a Phoenix collector who insisted on remaining anonymous for several years. Eventually it became known that the donor was Oliver James, who gave the college more than a score of paintings by famous American artists, valued at more than $125,000.

Echoing Gyberg’s declaration, author John Myers wrote in a 1957 Arizona Days and Ways magazine article that industrial executives for the first time were realizing that Arizona State College was one of the keys to central Arizona progress.

“Looking over the resources of the Valley of the Sun,” Myers wrote,” the captains of big industry picked out a feature which former leaders of the area had tended to ignore. What these forward-looking men of affairs observed was that in Arizona State College at Tempe the community had the means of offering the general and specialized educational programs essential for the development of skilled, well-informed industrial personnel ... and these men began putting the weight of their support behind it.”

To the surprise of many, Arizona State College had already launched an ambitious drive to build a truly important art collection. It was started with a 36

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“Oliver James owned a wonderful collection of American art, with artists from Gilbert Stuart to modern times,” said Rudy Tark, former curator of the ASU Art Collections. “He lived in Phoenix and became very supportive of Arizona State. Mr. James was a patriotic man who wanted students to have access to the works of famous American artists, so he gave many of his paintings and other art works to what was then ASC.” Other Phoenix collectors followed his lead and made significant contributions.

“Oliver James lived a block away from me,” related Rex Staley decades later, “and I knew him well. Not many years after the collection was hung in what was then the Matthews Library (ASC had no other building remotely resembling an art museum), I gave the college my best painting. It was painted

by Armand Guillaumin, the sixth of the famous French impressionists, and it had been appraised at $40,000.”

That was a huge sum in the 1950s.

Today the collection is valued well into the millions. Arizona State University’s present art museum, named for former President J. Russell Nelson, now boasts a magnificent collection. It had its roots in Oliver James’ generosity, and in the generosity of foundation board members and other supporters of the institution.

Chapter Three - Brainstorming

The M.O. Best Memorial Dinner was an annual event for several years, first held at the Westward Ho in 1957. The event had several purposes in addition to honoring the memory of the foundation’s first president: a pleasant social evening for ASC supporters and their wives, a means of publicizing the existence of the ASU Foundation, and an opportunity to persuade influential Arizonans to join in the foundation’s efforts.

It is interesting to note the foundation’s meager finances at that time. At its board meeting on Jan. 17, 1957 (to which the agriculture council’s board members were invited), it was decided that several key members of the ASC administration should be invited—with the understanding that each would be expected to pay for himself and his guest. That should not have been an excessive burden, however, since the cost per person, including a cocktail party and dinner, was set at $5.50!

In a document dated Feb. 23, 1957, entitled “Plans for Membership in ASUF,” the foundation board proposed increasing to 100 the number of its voting members. Each would contribute $10 or more a year; associate non-voting members could become board members with a $10 contribution; and the prestigious Carl Trumbull Hayden Club of the foundation would be open to anyone contributing $1,000 or more. But not many months later, several board members expressed unhappiness with a system that permitted anyone to buy his or her way onto the board. After spirited discussions during several meetings, the board decided to return to its policy of inviting new members on grounds other than monetary contributions. Later that year, on Dec. 3, the board made an important decision: All members of the agriculture council would be granted automatic membership in the foundation.

That move added 17 members to the roster of the foundation and effectively united the two support groups from that time forward.

Matthews Hall houses the nationally known Northlight Gallery.

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chapter four

“Now is the time to decide whether we shall build here a university greater than tax funds alone can build. Now is the time to begin building a university to match our dreams for the community.”

— ASC President Grady Gammage, January 1958

establishing the establishment

Waiting for results from the 1958 ASU name-change election, L-R: Alumni President Marvin Palmer, Alumni Secretary James Creasman, ASU President Grady Gammage, Walter Craig

On Jan. 17, 1958, the university foundation board held a joint meeting with the agriculture council board on the ASC campus.

Chaired by Sid Moeur of the council, the meeting was important in several respects. First, it resulted in plans for an annual membership dinner, to be named in memory of M.O. Best. It was also the debut of E.J. (Jed) Demson, whom President Gammage introduced as the man he had chosen to “assist the president of the college and the board of the foundation to activate the purposes of the foundation.”

It gave these business and community leaders an opportunity to explore the possibility of launching a statewide initiative campaign to change the institutional name to Arizona State University by vote of the people. And it provided Gammage a podium for one of his most memorable declarations about the future of the college.

“Now is the time to decide whether we shall build here a university greater than tax funds alone can build,” he thundered. “Now is the time to begin building a university to match our dreams for the community.”

Several in attendance that day remembered for many years that Gammage’s speech was one of the primary motivational engines that powered the foundation to start achieving meaningful goals for the university-in-waiting.

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Chapter Four - Establishing the Establishment

1958 proved to be one of the most momentous years in the university’s history. Early that spring, all Arizona was buzzing about a blockbuster offer

by Phoenix millionaire Walker McCune to present the college with nearly $600,000 to launch a two-year medical school, graduates of which would go onto established schools for their medical degrees.

The announcement of McCune’s offer caught President Richard Harvill of the University of Arizona completely by surprise. His first reaction was to issue a statement declaring a new medical school was unnecessary, since the WICHE arrangement was accommodating young Arizonans who wanted to become physicians. But soon Harvill was working overtime to launch a drive to obtain a medical school for the Tucson university.

Arizona had no medical school at the time, and was sending its aspiring physicians to other schools in the West through an organization called WICHE: Western Intercollegiate Compact for Higher Education. But many Arizonans believed the state had matured enough to start planning for its own college of medicine. McCune was one of those who held that view, and he was willing to make a major gift to bring his dream to reality.

The medical school controversy was destined to boil and bubble for years thereafter, and eventually Harvill and the University of Arizona would win the battle.

It was in 1958 that Professor Richard Bell of Arizona State announced that Channel 8 was available for what he called a “television university of the air,” and that the college should launch this ambitious project as “a vehicle to educate thousands eager for more education at the college or university level” by means of televised classes.

Bell enlisted the help of ASC Foundation members and other community leaders, especially John Mills and Dick Lewis, to obtain community support for the television station, now known as KAET-TV and housed at the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication building. Mills, president of the Westward Ho Hotel, headed up an ad hoc foundation television committee and Lewis, manager of Phoenix NBC affiliate KPNX-TV, was successful in obtaining financial aid and transmitting equipment for the new venture.

An $80,000 grant from the Walker McCune Foundation gave the project a jump start. The Ford Foundation provided taping machines and other equipment. Because KPNX had recently purchased a new transmitter and antenna, Lewis arranged for the station to donate to KAET its old transmitter and antenna atop South Mountain in Phoenix.

Carolyn Staats and Arthur Staats were psychology professors who conducted early research tests at the college during the 1950s. Their research focused on human behavior and learning.

KAET-TV began broadcasting commercial-free educational programming from ASU in 1961, at one time reaching 50 percent of Arizona’s viewing audience.

In September 1959 Bell persuaded Phoenix radio personality Bob Ellis to join the ASU faculty. Ellis proved to be an invaluable aid in bringing KAET into operation for the first time in January 1961. Six months later Bell left the university for a position back east and Ellis succeeded him as KAET’s general manager. Ellis served with distinction in that capacity for nearly three decades.

Most momentous of all was the snowballing campaign to permit the Arizona electorate to decide whether the institution should be renamed Arizona State University. The Arizona Board of Regents, dominated by University of Arizona alumni and supporters, had rejected the idea every year since 1954. The state legislature had been just as adamant in turning down repeated efforts to pass legislation making

the name official. Some legislators supported a suggestion made by a trio of state powerbrokers and introduced by Arizona Senator Harold Giss of Yuma that the school be called “Tempe University.” Upon digesting the proposed name, more than 2,000 students and supporters staged a protest in Tempe, then headed to the state capital to voice their displeasure.

There was only one option available: a vote of the people.

Foundation board members used their considerable political and economic clout to gain the support of business leaders for the name change, which was placed on the November 1958 ballot under the title “Proposition 200.”

Difficult as it may be to believe a half century later, it took a measure of bravery to be known

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Chapter Four - Establishing the Establishment

in Phoenix as an advocate of the ASU name because so many business executives and legislative leaders were University of Arizona graduates. Most of those old Wildcats were unalterably opposed to creating a dangerous rival to their alma mater, and they contributed generously to the Tucson-based “Vote No on Proposition 200” campaign throughout 1958. Since these men were chief operating officers, chairmen of boards, major customers and big depositors in Phoenix banks, one did not risk their anger carelessly.

“I remember casually asking a fellow Kiwanian at a dinner dance one night about his opinion of the proposed ASU name change,” foundation board member McMullin mused years after the fact. “I suppose I knew he was a University of Arizona alumnus, but I asked him anyway. At the very mention of the name ‘ASU’ he bristled, turned red, and stalked away, muttering some words that I did not take to be complimentary.”

At its June 12, 1958, meeting at the Westward Ho in Phoenix, the foundation board discussed all these opportunities. In addition, the minutes record that Gammage proposed that the foundation purchase the Nininger Meteorite Collection, one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of objects from outer space. Because an earlier venture supported by the foundation, a solar furnace experiment, had not met the board’s expectations, there was understandable doubt among members that the Nininger proposal was feasible. But George Boyd, ASC research director, was an enthusiastic advocate of the acquisition, as was the president. The purchase was made; Dr. Carleton Moore, a noted leader in the field of meteoritics, was installed as the director of the Center for Meteorite Studies (1961-2003), and ASU’s collection has grown steadily in size and international reputation. It is now the largest collection on any university campus, and the third largest in the world.

Another major event in 1958 was Dan Noble’s acceptance of membership in the foundation. Noble, who had brought Motorola to Arizona several years earlier, was the primary force behind creating the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Arizona State College, today’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. His efforts to build the engineering college and its faculty were in part self-serving, of course, since the fledgling semiconductor industry of the Phoenix area depended on the college for advanced training of its engineers. But his untiring support of the institution through the years was an invaluable asset, and his memory was honored with the opening of Arizona State University’s impressive Noble Science and Engineering Library in 1983.

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Students in the reading room with card catalogs, the library’s main system of organization and retrieval, which was replaced by computerized catalogs in the 1980s

Noble became the first chairman of the engineering advisory committee formed by a group of Phoenix-area leaders pledged to support engineering education at ASC. In an address not long after he joined the foundation, Noble declared, “I am proposing that a special fund be set up under the control of the ASC Foundation, and that this fund be earmarked for supplementary payment of salaries to faculty members in the sciences and engineering.”

He went on to urge newly arrived hightech corporations to donate money and equipment to the college, to assist in bringing in superlative faculty, to help develop engineering curricula, and to attract outstanding students to the engineering college. In closing, he announced that Motorola would start the ball rolling by making a gift of $150,000 for the development of engineering programs at ASC. At the Dec. 5, 1958, meeting, the foundation board voted unanimously to add Noble to the board. Meanwhile, Demson, who had found retirement boring and was glad to be back in the arena of action once more, used 1958 as a year of information gathering and fundraising. The new executive director of the Arizona State College Foundation traveled across the country, meeting with leaders of established foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford and Kellogg. He met with executives of the National Association of Manufacturers, members of the U.S. Congress and directors of successful university fundraising associations. When he had finished his fact-finding tours he wrote Gammage a memo, identifying more than 200 corporations and individuals he considered prime prospects for major gifts to the university.

Oddly enough, Demson’s travels did not convince him that ASU as yet had the potential for attracting big money from private sources. Instead, he envisioned the foundation as a vehicle for guaranteeing loans from private sources instead of waiting for the state legislature to appropriate urgently needed funds for everything from new buildings to faculty enhancement. The success of the university farm acquisition strategy apparently weighed heavily in his mind. Capital-fund campaigns might be feasible at a later date, he reasoned, but in the immediate future, the foundation should be carefully building outside support for its academic programs and receiving and acknowledging gifts as they came in.

As might be expected, academic leaders of Arizona State College were busy during 1958 making their wish lists with the eager anticipation of children waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. All this talk and activity directed at raising private money for the support of academic programs did not escape their attention, and they were more than ready when Gammage invited their recommendations for prioritizing a compilation of institutional needs.

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A school by six other names became Arizona State University in 1958. The Territorial Normal School was founded in 1885. It became Tempe Normal School of Arizona in 1896, Tempe Normal School in 1903, Tempe State Teachers College in 1925, Arizona State Teachers College in 1928 and Arizona State College in 1945. Arizona voters changed that in 1958, wildly endorsing the establishment of Arizona State University.

The first proposal for funding came from the College of Liberal Arts. Its faculty asked, among other things, for money to support research and publication, the purchase of microfilm for the library and travel to professional conferences. The other colleges quickly followed, snowing the foundation board under an avalanche of requests. In addition, it was proposed that the foundation set up an educational development fund of $500,000 to expand programs at the doctorate level.

Gammage saw at once that he must take control of the process, and issued an order that no proposal could be made to the board unless it had first been approved by the college committee. This committee, chaired by the president, consisted of H.D. Richardson, academic vice president; Gilbert Cady, vice president for business affairs; Weldon Shofstall, dean of students; and Jim Creasman, executive secretary of the alumni association.

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In a January 1959 memorandum to the foundation board, Gammage outlined his own priorities for funding.

“The university library contains only 315,000 volumes,” he wrote, “so building our library collection is of great importance.” Next, he said, was the launching of the university television station, KAET; support for the institution’s infant research programs; scholarships in all the colleges; and improvement of the art collection.

Demson, executive director of the foundation, outlined the procedures to be followed by the college committee in a memo to the foundation board. He stated the committee would solicit and consider proposals from all the colleges for funding of research, scholarships, fellowships and endowed chairs.

Spirited competition was already in progress across the campus for money yet to be raised.

Chapter Four - Establishing the Establishment

Some early contributions to the foundation came in the form of patent or licensing royalties assigned to the foundation. One such arrangement was with Phoenix Gems Inc., a firm that owned a patent on a non-poisonous insecticide made from diatomaceous earth. The product worked well enough to be adopted

by Hayden Flour Mills of Tempe, and other grain companies agreed to give it a try. Another concerned a patent for a formula used in making concrete.

The foundation scholarship fund was launched with a $100 donation from Phoenix newspaper publisher Wes Knorpp, and a $1,000 donation from Noble.

Soon, contributions came in from the Advertising Club of Phoenix, the Florists Delivery Association, the ASU Interfraternity Council, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, A.B. Robbs Trust Co. and several construction firms. But numerous and varied though they were, contributions to scholarships through the foundation totaled less than $10,000 by late 1958.

Kathryn and Grady Gammage

Before the end of 1958 the board voted to invite another group of influential Arizona leaders to join the foundation. Another six members were invited in January 1959 and 10 more in June of that year. Not all the invitees accepted, however. By October 1959 foundation membership stood at 71.

At the June 1959 board meeting it was decided to divide the foundation’s responsibilities among several standing committees. That was the genesis of committees that have long been active in directing foundation activities, among them the executive, membership and finance committees. A television committee headed by John Mills was created at the June meeting, as were committees on trusts and wills, industrial research, special projects, scholarships and the medical school.

The foundation was rapidly moving ahead. Apparently its success was attracting attention around the state. ASU leaders were delighted to learn that a Tucson hotel executive, Thomas B. Freeman, had written a letter thanking an ASU faculty member for sending him copies of a new ASU Foundation brochure. According to history student Eileen Graydon’s account, the hotelier congratulated ASU on the foundation’s progress and revealed his plan to use it as a model in establishing the University of Arizona’s own foundation in the fall of 1960.

Kathryn Gammage’s emergence as a force in the community was recognized at the October 1959 board meeting when she was voted into membership in the foundation. Her leadership abilities, displayed with such excellent results in the 1958 name-change campaign, and her devotion to the development of Arizona State University, were increasingly appreciated by the movers and shakers of central Arizona. She was destined to be a primary force in the growth of the foundation for almost four decades, and she worked tirelessly for the university until the year before her death in 1997.

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She and Gammage were married in 1949, and she gave birth to their only child, Grady Jr., two years later. Kay, as she was known by her many friends, was hostess to countless receptions and other social events in the historic president’s home — today the Virginia G. Piper Writers House — on the ASC campus , and she became known as an intellectual force, particularly with her popular book reviews and addresses before large audiences.

Early the next morning, with his doctor at his bedside, he suffered a massive heart attack and died.

Only two months after her admission to foundation membership, on Dec. 21, 1959, she had planned an evening of Christmas shopping with her husband. He had returned home late from a meeting with Lewis Ruskin that afternoon, at which the proposed Frank Lloyd Wright auditorium on the campus was the topic of discussion, and was not feeling well; he begged off from the shopping expedition and went to bed.

But his dream of a world-class university was brought to reality by a host of faculty, students, alumni and community supporters; and Kay Gammage had few equals in that hard-fought battle. Working alongside other leaders of the ASU Foundation, she won friends for the university and ultimately left a legacy as founder of the university’s Friends of Music, the History Associates, Friends of Channel 8 and the ASU Library Associates while also serving on many commissions exploring women’s issues.

State Press staff working on the student newspaper, 1960s

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President Gammage would never see the magnificent performing arts center, named as a memorial to him and completed five years later on the Mill Avenue curve, the site where trailers and apartments once housed returning World War II veterans and their families. Nor would he witness the astounding growth of the institution to which he devoted 27 years of his career.

Construction began on Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on May 23, 1962. It took 25 months to complete and opened in 1964 with a performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

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chapter five

early major gifts

Carleton Moore examines a sample in the Nininger Meteorite Laboratory. Moore founded the Center for Meteorite Studies in 1961 with 700 specimens from the Harvey H. Nininger collection.

The purchase of the Nininger Meteorite Collection occupied much of the board’s energies during the early months of 1960.

Coming up with the purchase price of $275,000 was a daunting challenge, but with the promise of help from the National Science Foundation the board decided to forge ahead. A loan of $45,000, secured by board-member signatures, was arranged at the First National Bank of Arizona. Wealthy New Yorker Herbert Fales, a man with scientific interests and a growing affection for ASU, contributed shares of IBM stock purchased in 1932. Others chipped in, and at last the foundation sold the appreciated Fales stock for enough to finalize the purchase.

Palm Walk, 1966

By that time, following six months of Acting President H.D. Richardson’s tenure in place of the late President Gammage, the Arizona Board of Regents had selected G. Homer Durham, then vice president of the University of Utah, to succeed to the presidency of Arizona State University. Durham was an excellent selection, and he arrived just in time to get the institution moving again after a period of drift that threatened to erode much of the progress Gammage had achieved. A man of keen intellect and wide-ranging academic experience, Durham had an amazing store of knowledge in a dozen fields. He had earned a national reputation in his chosen field of political science. Physicians declared he knew almost as much about medicine as they did, and lawyers were impressed by his legal

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Chapter Five - Early Major Gifts

knowledge. He was an art aficionado, and loved music as few others did.

Moreover, he was a sports fan, and even accompanied ASU sports teams on trips.

A true Renaissance man was Durham.

Understandably, everything was put on hold until the new university president was installed. In June 1960 ASU Foundation President J.C. “Charles” Wetzler announced that all committees of the foundation should remain inactive until Gammage’s successor was chosen and arrived on the scene.

The half-year delay, which actually extended well into the fall months, cost the foundation valuable momentum at a crucial time in its development.

But ASU President Durham soon had the foundation engine revved up again.

Recognizing the vital need for community support of the university, he worked tirelessly to improve relations with business and industrial leaders of the Phoenix area. One of his first actions was to announce that he and his wife Eudora did not choose to live in the antiquated president’s house on campus, but wanted a modern residence in which sizable groups could be entertained.

The regents went along with his request, and the legislature voted funds to build a spacious home on College Avenue, a mile south of the campus, which was to house ASU presidents and their families until the mid-1990s.

Foundation members of the period remembered Eudora’s fascination with the color pink and the decor which featured that color in the house throughout the nine years of the Durham presidency. The Durhams made it a point to know foundation leaders well, and to make the support group an integral part of the ASU development team.

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Halftime performance during a football game in Goodwin Stadium, ca. 1940s

Several important contributions to the university were made during 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Tom Chauncey of Scottsdale made a gift of $12,000, the original purpose of which was to establish a student loan fund. But Durham and his business vice president, Gilbert Cady, persuaded the Chaunceys to allow the money to be used for publication of the university’s first history, “The Arizona State University Story,” written by Ernest Hopkins and Alfred Thomas Jr. The book was completed in time for distribution during the institution’s 75th anniversary, which was celebrated throughout 1960.

It is still used today as a reference work.

Both authors made lasting contributions to the development of the university during their association with the institution. Hopkins, a retired journalist and historian, established the modern ASU journalism department, launched

was largely because of that friendship that the Longs decided to join the growing circle of private supporters of the university. Hugh Long owned a valuable collection of stringed instruments, including some made by famed violin masters centuries ago, and presented several of them to ASU. In addition, foundation board minutes reveal the Longs made a gift of $50,000 for support of music education. That money, supplemented by later gifts, was used to build and install the magnificent Hugh and Barbara Vaughn Long pipe organ in the newly completed Gammage Memorial Auditorium (today’s ASU Gammage) five years later.

many budding writers (including Don Dedera, prolific author of books on the Southwest) and wrote a history of the Valley National Bank during his years of service on the faculty. But he may be best known for writing the words to the ASU Alma Mater song, “Where the Bold Saguaros Raise Their Arms on High,” teaming with Professor Miles Dresskell, who composed the music. Thomas spent his entire career in the employ of ASTC, ASC and ASU, most of it as registrar and director of admissions, and later as university archivist. His careful preservation of documents throughout a half century provided the university with precious historical records that otherwise would have been lost.

It was at this time that Barbara Vaughn Long, an alumna of the college, and her husband, New Jersey financier Hugh Long, made substantial gifts to ASU. Kathryn Gammage had become a good friend of Barbara Long, and it

Walker McCune presented ASU with $69,000 to assist in establishing the university’s television station, KAET. Texas Instruments Co. made a donation of $30,000 for use by engineering faculty to develop an experimental turbine engine. Other gifts, in smaller amounts, helped institutional development.

Not all gifts offered to the university were accepted by the foundation. One was an alligator farm, which some thought could be a money producer.

But Cady investigated the proposal, was not convinced of its practicality and recommended to the board that the alligator farm not be accepted.

By the summer of 1960 foundation assets had inched past the $400,000 mark. A financial report made at that time emphasized that the foundation, by purchasing land on the university’s behalf, had saved Arizona taxpayers $178,000. The financial statement listed total land purchases made since 1955 valued at $494,833. The foundation had received cash donations totaling $129,607, and another $2,715 came from membership dues.

Pledges totaled another $124,000.

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At the time of the report the foundation held three real estate properties for the university: 10 acres in Deer Valley on the northern edge of Phoenix valued at $5,500; the Solar House in Scottsdale (designed for solar energy research), valued at $47,250; and the Presbytery of Phoenix, valued at $ 17,833.

Arizona Governor Paul Fannin was invited to address the foundation board on Nov. 27, 1962. He urged the foundation to make long-range plans for coordinating industrial development and higher education, with the goal of building a more productive economy for the state. Arizona State University, he declared, had a key role in attracting new industry to Arizona and for providing educational opportunities for

the engineers and other employees of major high-tech companies. In closing, he cited a critical need for endowed professorships to attract top-level faculty to the university.

Within 18 months, partly through the efforts of the foundation, President Durham was able to announce to the board that Motorola had endowed the Paul V. Galvin Professorship in physics and engineering science, and the Maytag family had funded $96,000 for the Robert E. Maytag Chair for graduate instruction and research in the care of captive wild animals. Other professorships would soon become reality.

Durham’s plea for money to support graduate fellowships in research was answered by the foundation, which agreed to use a portion of its funds for that purpose. The first two graduate fellowships funded by the foundation were granted in 1962 to a pair of Sun Devils to support their studies in organic medicinal chemistry and industrial engineering.

During the 1960s Arizona State University and its foundation did not actively pursue gifts for institutional development, but instead quietly cultivated friends and gratefully accepted their generosity when the spirit moved them.

Kathryn Gammage, who was asked by Durham to take on the job of accepting gifts to the university and involving potential donors in the institution’s maturation, actually served as the unofficial development director for many years. In 1961 the foundation board appointed her as “associate secretary.”

She served in that position, and later as secretary, until her retirement.

Arizona Gov. Paul Fannin declared in 1962 that ASU had a key role to play in attracting new industry to Arizona and providing educational opportunities for the engineers and other employees of major high-tech companies.

The Poisonous Animal Research Laboratory was founded in 1940 and developed a serum for scorpion stings. In this 1956 photo, a student extracts venom from a rattlesnake.

This bustling street scene on the corner of Orange Street and College Avenue shows the university coming into its own by 1960.

Durham and his successors for several years thought it best for the university to solicit private financial support in a quiet, low-key manner. Their hesitancy stemmed in part from a widespread prejudice against the concept of public universities trying to raise money from the private sector, which was at that time believed by many to be the exclusive hunting ground of privately supported schools. At meetings of the American Alumni Council and other collegiate support associations, fundraisers from private universities often bitterly accused the public institutions of trying to tap into their principal source of support.

But as private schools came to accept increasing amounts of tax money for research, student aid and other purposes from federal and state agencies, that argument gradually lost its validity.

Today, both public and private institutions of higher learning actively pursue financial support from many available sources.

Despite the impressive list of grants described earlier in this chapter, the foundation’s own finances remained at a low level. The 1964 financial summary showed the foundation with less than $250,000 in cash and investments.

Several funds had been established by the board for specific uses — the Long, Galvin, Herberger and a few others — but money in these funds was not available for general assistance to the university.

Thus, when Durham exhorted the board in its June 1965 meeting to raise money for books in the new Charles Trumbull Hayden Library on the campus, there was little the board members could do to help.

The list of those who attended the foundation’s annual meeting on June 3, 1965, is full of familiar names: Wetzler, John Sandige, Don Stewart, Moeur, Rex Staley and Horace Griffen, along with Riney Salmon, Paul Singer, Henry Haupt, John Curry, Ben Avery, Oscar Palmer, Frank Fraser, Allen Rosenberg, Jack Sheely and Laird Racey.

Present from the university administration were Durham, Cady and Kay Gammage.

In 10 years of existence the foundation had become firmly established, had gained visibility in the community and had won at least a measure of respect from the university administration and the deans of the various colleges. Some deans still believed they could raise money more effectively on their own, but they were willing to accept any help the foundation could provide.

A truly effective organization for university support and development was still more a dream than a reality at that moment.

That was the financial situation of the foundation as it passed its 10th birthday. And, although new friends of the university had been cultivated, the workhorses of the foundation were still the loyal few who had toiled through the agriculture council era and the years beyond.

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chapter six

bearing fruit Sometimes the right people end up in the right places at the right time.

The Herberger Theater Center, located near ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support and foster the growth of performing arts in Phoenix as the premier performance venue, arts incubator and advocate.

Robert Herberger, who made a fortune in a Midwest retail store chain, was accustomed to dealing in big numbers. He and his wife Kax (later to become chairman of the ASU Foundation board) came to Phoenix to retire, and in succeeding years they enriched the life of the Salt River Valley as no couple had before. The Herberger Theater is just one monument to their generosity. The Phoenix Symphony, museums, the visual arts and scores of other cultural treasures all benefitted because the Herbergers came west from the heartland.

Gifts in the millions of dollars were commonplace to them.

“This is really pretty penny-ante stuff we’re talking about here!”

Robert Herberger exclaimed as he left a mid-1960s meeting of the ASU Foundation board. He had given the foundation his solar house, which was accepted with gratitude and soon sold for $21,000, as the Oct. 5, 1965, meeting minutes reported. But he was a bit disappointed at the limited scope of the university’s development goals and urged the foundation to start thinking in grander terms.

President Durham could not have agreed more. Not long thereafter, he presented a list of proposals to the board which included development of the university’s new College of Law, doubling the collections in the new Hayden Library, dramatic support of faculty salaries (including new chairs to attract nationally recognized scholars) and significant broadening of the university’s support base in the community.

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“Arizona State University has struggled to make academic advancements in the face of severe underfunding,” Durham told the board. “Tax support is falling behind our needs every year, and I find it painful to report that Maricopa County high schools receive more tax money per student, $773, than does ASU, with $756. It is universally recognized that the economic health of this area is dependent to a major degree on the development of the university in its midst.”

Durham acknowledged the state legislature was doing its best, but appropriations to ASU were falling well behind the needs of the institution’s skyrocketing enrollment, which was fast approaching 20,000 students in 1966. The only solution, he declared, was to generate significant increases in private support.

Everyone on the board agreed, but no one was able to come up with a viable program to reach the goals the ASU president had enunciated. Certainly the foundation financial report for 1966 provided little cause for optimism. Cash receipts had actually declined during the previous year. Total contributions were only $15,549.

Amazingly, the foundation’s administrative expenses were listed in the report at only $315.

The picture brightened a bit in 1967 with the announcement that Blanche P. Strong had left $100,000 to the university in a codicil to her will. Unfortunately, she had neglected to sign the codicil, so leaders of the university and the foundation had to prove that she had indeed intended to make the gift, which included $30,000 in cash and the remainder in government bonds. Her intent, according to records and the testimony of those close to her, was to give financial support to the development of the new law school, and to provide scholarships for law students.

Another gift was received with some puzzlement. Mrs. J.C. Lincoln, a well-known Arizona philanthropist, believed that goat milk was much healthier than milk from cows. For years she maintained a herd of goats to provide milk for her family, but when she became physically unable to care for them she presented them to ASU, along with a check for $1,000 for their maintenance. Because Lincoln had long been a friend of the university no one dared refuse the gift for fear of angering the great lady. Kay Gammage often chuckled in later years about the day she telephoned Dan Robinson at the university farm to inform him that the goats would soon be on their way to his keeping.

“There was dead silence on the other end of the line,” recalled Gammage. “I could tell that Dr. Robinson was less than thrilled about his new acquisition.”

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Built in 1966, Hayden Library is named for Charles Trumbull Hayden, founder of Tempe and first president of the board of the Arizona Territorial Normal School. The five-story building was designed by the architectural firm Weaver and Dover in the “pavilion” style and featured a dry moat, intended as a sculpture garden and quiet reading area. In 1989 the library added two floors below Hayden Lawn and moved the main entrance of the library as part of this expansion. The design of the expansion included a grand stairway leading below grade to a large open-air gardened courtyard.

And while Robinson was less than enthused, the small gift of goats led to a long-term relationship with Lincoln, her son David and daughter-in-law Joan.

Their commitment to the role of ethics in higher education would eventually lead to the establishment of the Lincoln Center for Ethics at ASU and a teaching focus on applied ethics by Lincoln-endowed professors across the university.

No such reticence was expressed about Walter Bimson’s next act of generosity, however. The Valley Bank CEO sent another check for $25,000, this one earmarked for Hayden Library development. It could hardly have come at a more opportune time, given the drive for library excellence which was in progress in 1967–68.

The foundation started the year 1967 with a new secretary, Allen Rosenberg, who was appointed to the post at the end of 1966 after the untimely death of Sidney Moeur. Few men had served Arizona State University and its foundation with the zeal and tenacity displayed

by Moeur. His loss left a gaping void in the leadership of the foundation and also of the alumni association, which he had served as president and continued to advise and support for decades.

During the latter years of his administration Durham became increasingly enamored with the idea of establishing several satellite campuses of Arizona State University across the Valley of the Sun. The Tempe campus was becoming overcrowded, and funds for new construction there were not sufficient to serve the ever-growing student enrollment.

There may have been an ulterior motive in his scheme: laying claim for ASU to all of the Greater Phoenix area. The University of Arizona, and to a lesser extent Northern Arizona University, had been eying the Valley hungrily. About half the state’s population now resided in the metro Phoenix area, and other institutions were eager to set up academic centers there.

Durham served ASU with distinction during his nine years at the helm. He built on the academic foundation laid by Gammage, presiding over the creation of new colleges and research centers, moving ASU toward prominence in several fields and giving leadership in one of the busiest construction periods in the institution’s history. Enrollment soared and faculty quality was enhanced.

He labored mightily to establish a branch campus in the West Valley, and his efforts later came to fruition with the creation in 1984 of the ASU’s West campus near the border of Phoenix and Glendale.

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The president and foundation members made gestures toward several community leaders and corporate executives in hopes some person or company would donate land for one or more of those satellites.

In April 1967 Durham reported to the foundation board that he and Charles Wetzler had just returned from a visit to the Goodyear Company offices in Litchfield Park, hosted by Newell Kring of the Goodyear board. Goodyear was ready to offer 600 acres of land at Litchfield Park to ASU for use in developing a branch campus. West-side citizens had long been clamoring for a university facility nearer their homes, and Goodyear was willing to help make that dream come true. Foundation members believed the business community would back the idea with dollars. For the next two years proponents of the west-side campus labored to win support for the plan.

So sure was Durham that the legislature would approve the west-side campus that in 1969 he had it listed in the ASU catalog, with the name “Litchfield College.” Its chancellor was listed in the catalog, too: Richard Landini, the brilliant young English professor whom the president had been grooming for the post. But as the poet noted, there is many a slip twixt cup and lip.

Opposition to the new college sprang up in the legislature and by the end of the 1969 session the proposal was defeated.

Durham, who had enjoyed generally good relations with the lawmakers to that point, was chagrined at their action. His disappointment was viewed by many as a contributing factor in his decision to leave ASU in July for an important administrative post in the Utah university system. His departure in the summer of 1969 was sudden and, to many, devastating.

The west-side chancellor-in-waiting Landini left ASU not long thereafter to become president of Illinois State University.

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Twelfth president Harry K. Newburn presents an Alumni Appreciation Award to Kathryn Gammage

It is probable the strain of student political protests on campus in the late 1960s helped push Durham into his decision to leave. Like most other university presidents of that troubled era, he was faced with divisiveness among his foundation members and other supporters, many of whom believed the profane and insolent student demonstrators were being coddled far too much.

Before he departed, Durham made one tentative gesture toward the establishment of a viable ASU development office. He enlarged the duties of his director of university publications, Dean Smith, to include laying the groundwork for the development operation. The plan never reached fruition, however, and it was dropped soon after Durham’s departure.

Kathryn Gammage continued to function as the de facto development officer for three more years.

association director; Dean Smith, director of publications; Joe Spring, news bureau director; and Bob Ellis, general manager of KAET-TV. Wetzler, who had served as foundation president almost from its birth, had stepped down a short time before, and was replaced in 1970 by James Patrick, CEO of Valley National Bank. It was hard for anyone to remember when Wetzler had not been “Mr. ASU Foundation.” No one else had served the foundation and the university with such unswerving devotion; he holds a special place of honor in the annals of ASU growth and development.

Nobody could accuse Harry Newburn of lacking the experience necessary in a successful university president. The silver-haired acting dean of the ASU College of Education had been president of three other universities before coming to Arizona State University, so he was a natural choice to step into the vacuum left by Durham’s hurried exit. Newburn was nearing the end of a distinguished academic career, and it was not his desire to take on still another presidency. But there was no time to conduct the necessary search, so he consented to serve until a permanent president could be named.

An early Newburn appointment was Troy Crowder, one of his top aides in a previous presidency, as assistant to the president and director of university relations. At the Nov. 23, 1970, meeting of the foundation board he introduced Crowder and announced that “he will assist in the activities of the foundation.”

Actually Crowder was to be the university’s representative to the board. In addition, he was charged with coordinating the efforts of Kay Gammage and other university administrators involved in community outreach. Included on Crowder’s team were Jim Creasman, director of special services; Don Dotts, alumni

Wetzler’s daughter, Pit Wetzler Lucking, followed in his footsteps, serving the growing university with exemplary devotion for many years. She was welcomed as a member of the ASU Foundation board in 1970.

“My father devoted much of his time and energy to ASU as early as the 1950s,” she said. “He was one of the civic leaders who formed the Agriculture Advisory Council, and he later served as chairman of the foundation board of directors. He was a firm believer in creating educational opportunity for young people. Then, too, he was convinced that the Phoenix area could never reach its potential without a strong university in its midst.”

As 1970 came to a close, foundation leader and bank CEO Patrick and the board met often with university officers to discuss strategy for establishing a branch campus for ASU. That it should be on the west side of the Valley was generally accepted. So was the premise that it should not compete with the thriving community colleges, wherever it might be located. A two-year upper-division (junior and senior years) facility seemed to be the answer. Students in the broad area from Glendale to Buckeye could then take their first two years at Glendale Community College and the last two at what was soon to be known as “ASU West,” and more recently as ASU at the West campus.

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Sterling and Barbara Ridge of Glendale were two of the more vocal supporters of the new campus. Although both had strong ties to ASU, they were becoming exasperated at the never-ending delays, and voiced the opinion that if ASU did not want to exert pressure for a west-side facility they would be happy to talk to any other university that would. That threat was a factor in prompting ASU officials to resume the effort begun four years before by President Durham.

ASU’s West campus was still a decade away from groundbreaking, but university supporters eventually overcame opposition from the board of regents and state legislature to fund construction of the new campus.

The year 1972 was of special significance to Arizona State University and those loyal supporters who had kept the ASU Foundation alive through long years of

Forest Avenue toward the northwest, 1960s

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striving. It was at the November meeting of the board that Patrick introduced Carl S. Miller, a professional fundraising consultant, as the first full-time ASU director of development. Miller had been development director at Marquette University and vice president for institutional advancement at the University of the Pacific before coming to Arizona.

Miller was applauded for his brief message to the board in which he declared that “it has been agreed that the university will from now on be much more aggressive in its programs of fundraising.” Miller was to supervise the efforts of Gammage, director of gifts and endowments, and he was given authority to hire a staff reflecting the new goals of the development office. Board members left the meeting with hope the university would now allot the necessary resources to assure that development efforts would bear significant fruit.

Forest Avenue toward the northwest, 1960s.

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chapter seven

Miller time Arizona State University was engaged in fundraising in name only when Carl Miller came to work for the university in 1972. The way he saw it: “ASU was making friends and accepting occasional gifts, but the administration had not been committed to going after money in a unified and aggressive way.”

Miller, who passed away in 2010, was the development director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix before coming aboard. He was hired to launch a serious fundraising program at ASU. But he could readily see that a great deal of planning and preliminary labor was needed before money could start rolling in. Kay Gammage was the only development staff member, and there never had been a professional director of development. There was a severe shortage of everything: budget, office space and furniture, to name but a few. Worst of all, there had been little planning for a long-range fundraising effort.

Manzanita Hall at ASU’s Tempe campus was built in 1967 at a cost of $3.7 million, and was the tallest structure in the city for several decades.

In May 2011 it underwent a $50 million renovation which opened in 2013.

It was not quite true that there was no fundraising in progress.

Deans of several colleges and heads of other departments and academic centers had been soliciting funds for some time. In particular, the College of Business Administration and the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences had assembled an imposing group of industrial and business leaders that had donated appreciable sums of money. The alumni association had a modest fundraising program, and intercollegiate athletics had its Sun Angels and Sun Devil Club. Each group was going on its merry way, unaware and uncaring about the efforts of the others.

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As a result, some potential donors were being solicited by two, three or more ASU entities. The donors were often annoyed, and the haphazard solicitations did not produce nearly as much as they should have.

Miller patiently went about remedying as many of the deficiencies as he could. “I was directed to report to Troy Crowder, assistant to the president,” he said later.

“Troy was a jewel to work for. He was not only helpful in every way, but he provided ready access to (new ASU) President John Schwada.”

Crowder, who had come to ASU as assistant to President Newburn, was found to be so valuable to succeeding presidents that he stayed until retirement.

The development office was assigned space in the agriculture building, near enough to the administration building to facilitate visits to the offices of those in power. Crowder introduced Miller to university executives and helped him and Gammage get settled in their new quarters. She accompanied him on frequent trips to Phoenix to meet community leaders.

“I soon decided that one of my top priorities was to centralize ASU fund solicitations in one place, and that place should be the ASU Foundation,” Miller said.

“Jim Patrick of Valley National Bank, the foundation president, and Ed Carson of First Interstate Bank, the foundation vice president, were wonderful. They helped me get settled and acquainted. Other foundation board members made things easier for me.”

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Students at a residence hall cookout and concert, late 1960s

Aerial view of the Tempe campus, 1960s

President Schwada made good on his promise to give his new development director the staff necessary to get the job done. Jack Foreman, Miller’s first hire, was assigned to work in alumni fundraising.

Bud Dooley was brought in to direct long-range and planned giving. Office staff members were hired and operating procedures were established.

“The first financial goal I set was to bring in at least twice as much money as we spent,” Miller remembered shortly before his death. “That was a modest start, but I had visions of launching a capital campaign that would raise $100 million for ASU. That was a wild dream in the beginning, but we were determined to look to the future and to think big.”

From his first day on the job, Miller was determined to have the ASU Foundation play a bigger and more active role in the development process.

Most importantly, he wanted the foundation committees to take on much more responsibility.

Officers of the foundation for 1973 were longtime ASU loyalists, and several had been active on the Agriculture Advisory Committee and in the foundation since their respective foundings. Miller could not have asked for more knowledgeable and loyal leaders.

It must be noted that the development director was not an officer of the foundation at that time — that was about to change. The board made Miller’s position as the on-the-spot manager an official one by electing him president of the foundation at its March 1974 meeting. Patrick’s title was changed to “chairman.”

Miller’s first perusal of the financial records revealed how far the foundation had to go. Because it had long been a “pass-through” instrument, receiving money and giving it to the university, it had scarcely any money of its own. The balance sheet for 1972–73 showed that contributions to the foundation for the year totaled $2,100. Membership dues brought in $590. Other income was $131. Total funds available, both restricted and unrestricted, totaled $4,804.

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Schwada agreed with Miller’s assertion that the foundation should be the principal, and eventually the only, conduit for gifts to ASU. But that transition would take time. Schwada demonstrated his increased commitment to the foundation by attending board meetings and making a detailed report on university progress and problems. In his October 1973 message to the board Schwada said he was proud to announce that the American Association of Liberal Arts Colleges had just rated ASU’ s College of Liberal Arts “Number One in the West” and in the top 30 nationally. He said that the National Football League was seriously considering Phoenix as a location for a new league franchise, and that Sun Devil Stadium was the only venue in the state considered suitable for an NFL team. Finally, he reported that Motorola’s ties with the university were growing ever stronger, and that the company had purchased land adjoining and across Elliot Road from the university farm. (The farm, acquired through the efforts of the Agriculture Advisory Committee, would soon become the site of the ASU Research Park.)

ASU Sun Devil Stadium, 1960s

During his first year as development director, Miller found himself in close association with a most remarkable mover and shaker with the same surname: Fred Miller, ASU’s director of athletics. Miller was a dreamer and a man who let no obstacle stand in his way.

Fred Miller quickly introduced plans for enlarging and refurbishing Sun Devil Stadium, and for enlisting the aid of the Sun Angels, the Sun Devil Club and wealthy individuals in building new and grander facilities for golf, tennis and track and field. Today, all of these are jewels in the ASU athletic crown.

But a more immediate goal in 1973 was to build a baseball stadium that would take a back seat to no other university stadium in America. Coach Bobby Winkles had made baseball a major sport at ASU and had won three national collegiate championships in the 1960s. Jim Brock, his successor, was to win two more national titles.

Rising attendance at baseball games made building a new stadium imperative.

Fred Miller knew the Packard family, whose patriarch, William Guthrie Packard, had been a prominent member of the publishing industry.

Sun Devils baseball team national champs, 1965

The busy athletic director persuaded William Jr. and Peter Packard to give $230,000 toward the baseball stadium project, with the understanding that it would be named for their father. Carl Miller and other friends of ASU agreed to join in the fundraising effort.

In his report to the foundation board in April 1973, Carl Miller said it had been determined the stadium could be built on the northeast corner of the campus, fronting Rural Road near the Salt River, for $450,000. Supplementing the Packard gift was a pledge of $50,000 from Western Tire Co., $40,000 from the Sun Angels and $100,000 from a fortuitous revenue overrun in the ASU Department of Athletics. Still the fund was $30,000 short, and foundation members agreed to help raise the money.

Alas, as is often the case with such projects, the price went up sharply before the first spade could be turned. At the foundation board’s October 1973 meeting, Carl Miller brought the dolorous news that the stadium would now cost at least $705,000, due to increases in architectural fees and costs for soil preparation, lights, artificial turf and more. Plans for artificial turf were dropped and other plans were scaled down.

The grandstand was to seat 3,000, and movable bleachers would accommodate another 5,000.

ASU baseball boosters wanted the stadium badly enough to pay for it, and Carl Miller was delighted to report to the board that dedication ceremonies for the new Packard Stadium would be held April 7, 1974.

Late in 1973 the foundation experienced some unusual rifts in its solidarity in the form of dissatisfaction with the university and some board policies.

The first volley was fired by Patrick, who was responding to the ASU administration’s urging that the foundation should become more aggressive and take over the sole direction of university fundraising programs. He said he agreed that the university and affiliated groups should direct their fundraising activities through the foundation.

“But,” he stated with some vehemence, “it should not be construed as an effort on behalf of the university or the foundation to take over, change or de-emphasize fundraising activities now underway or planned.”

Craig was even more emphatic in his disagreement with the new policy. “This policy might well be misunderstood by the Sun Angels, the Law Society and other groups that raise money for the university,” he declared. “They will fear that their direction will be taken over by the foundation.”

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Craig’s argument was well founded.

Some longtime Sun Angel donors expressed indignation over what they viewed as a violation of their independence, and a few said they might withdraw their support if this came about. But cooler heads prevailed; the various support groups continued their assistance and the idea of a unified fundraising effort gained acceptance, but with considerable grumbling.

Another dissident opinion was heard, this time from the venerable Obed Lassen.

“I would like to see some evidence,” he thundered, “that the ASU Alumni Association and others have as much interest in the welfare of the university as does this foundation.” He had reason to complain, citing the comparatively anemic record of university support by ASU graduates. Apologists were quick to point out that, until recent years, most graduates were teachers with limited ability to make substantial gifts. But Lassen’s concern was shared by many other foundation members, who wanted to see more evidence of ASU graduates’ love of their alma mater before digging more deeply into their own pockets.

A proposal to give major donors a seat on the foundation board fueled still another fiery condemnation from a veteran supporter of the university.

This one was voiced by none other than Sherman Hazeltine, normally as agreeable and even tempered as they came. “I am affronted by the idea that anyone making a gift of $25,000 or more should be automatically considered for board membership,” he declared. Other longtime board members nodded their heads in agreement. Some considered the idea as “buying a seat on the board” and voiced their opposition to the proposal.

Despite these outbursts by board

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ASU completed an undefeated football season in 1970 with a win at the Peach Bowl.

members, Patrick and Miller must have taken some satisfaction in the fact that board members obviously cared deeply about the university and the foundation.

The ASU Foundation staff must have felt like rolling stones during the early 1970s. From his first office in the agriculture building, Miller was brought closer to the center of university power by Schwada, who directed that the development operation be moved to the second floor of the administration building.

By mid-1976, however, the staff had outgrown those offices and was moved again, this time to Mariposa Hall on Apache Boulevard. It was a logical move, because it brought the development and alumni association offices together in what had once been the Sands Hotel. But some foundation members saw the move as evidence that the university president had lost some interest in foundation affairs.

“I don’t believe that was the case,” recalled Miller later, “because the president continued to be supportive. It was evident, though, that he did not want to take an active personal role in soliciting gifts to the university. He believed that his energies should be directed mainly to relating with the board of regents and the legislature.”

Like presidents of many other large public universities, Schwada was willing to let his vice presidents and deans manage the day-to-day affairs of the institution.

Because of this management philosophy, Schwada seemed somewhat distant and unavailable to faculty and staff. They remembered the days when the institution was smaller and President Durham mingled freely, dropping in unexpectedly to meet people and acquaint himself with every university operation, from the graduate college to the carpenter shop.

“I used to urge President Schwada to go out onto the mall, shake some hands and be seen,” Vice President Cady once said. “But he answered that he had more important things to do.”

Although the president recognized the need for increased private fundraising if ASU was to achieve its educational and community-service goals, he expected the foundation and other university support groups to do most of what he sometimes referred to as “tin cupping.”

Meanwhile, the ASU Foundation was moving forward, adding new board members and heeding Miller’s urging to make its committees take on more responsibility. Joining the board in early 1974 were such community leaders as Keith Turley, Tim Barrow, Ralph Eaton, Ted Riggins Jr., Mae Talley and Barbara Long. Later in the year, two prominent developers, Ralph Staggs and Elmer Bradley, were elected to the board, along with businessman and philanthropist Jack Whiteman.

Cady Mall has always been a hub of activity on ASU’s Tempe campus. In this 1970s photo, students buy used books from a vendor.

Don Dotts reported to the board that the alumni association was stepping up its fundraising activities, and now was cultivating potential givers while they were still undergraduates. Miller revealed his plan to launch a long-range development program aimed at raising $42 million, which made some board members gasp — until he explained that he was willing to adopt a short-range goal of $5 million a year.

Miller’s plan for using the $42 million, developed in concert with President Schwada and other university executives, included 10 fully endowed chairs and 15 professorships. The money would also help build an art museum, a theater and a planetarium.

Students study, relax and soak in the sun in the middle of the ASU Tempe campus, 1980s.

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Progress had been made in 1974–75 on several fundraising fronts. The university had received 7,800 gifts totaling $761,478, Miller reported. The alumni association’s 3,063 gifts added up to $112,848 and the Friends of Channel 8 (KAET) received 4,730 donations totaling $78,463. The ASU Foundation’s 27 gifts came to $36,105.

There was some encouragement in these figures, but they revealed how far the development programs had to go to bring in even the minimal annual goal of $5 million.

University Drive pedestrian overpass, 1986. The bridge provides a crossing over University Drive, and also houses lines for steam, telecommunications, chilled water and emergency power for the north campus.

The passage of time was thinning the ranks of long-time ASU Foundation members.

Orval Knox, one of the original Agriculture Advisory Council leaders, resigned from the board because of ill health in 1975. In August of that year, former foundation president Patrick died. He had been succeeded only a short time before by Rod McMullin. Then, within a few weeks, the university and the foundation communities were saddened by the deaths of Cady and Wes Knorpp.

New board members were announced in December 1975: Tom Chauncey, Robert Herberger, John Kieckhefer, Wayne Legg and Russ Lyon Jr. Allen Rosenberg was elected chairman of the foundation board in November 1976.

Serving with him and President Miller were Wally Craig, first vice president; Ted Riggins, second vice president; Legg, secretary; Ed Carson, treasurer; and Gammage, associate secretary.

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Talley demonstrated almost at once that she was going to be a mover and shaker on the foundation board. She was soon appointed chairperson of a committee and given the responsibility of raising $2.5 million to support the research of the Arizona State University Cancer Research Institute headed

by Dr. George Pettit.

At the January 1977 meeting of the foundation board, Chairman Rosenberg announced that Talley had agreed to make a gift to the foundation of the historic Castle Hot Springs resort northwest of Phoenix.

Castle Hot Springs had once been the winter vacation home of financiers who had ticker tapes installed in their cottages. The rich and famous parked their private railroad cars at a nearby junction and enjoyed elegant dining and health-giving waters for weeks at a time.

Young John F. Kennedy recovered at Castle Hot Springs from wounds suffered in South Pacific naval action.

ASU President J. Russell Nelson with artist Jerry Peart at the dedication of the Centennial Sculpture, 1984

Castle Hot Springs was indeed a treasure, although a bit run down from lack of occupancy for years. The hotel and other facilities had been appraised at $1.1 million.

Talley, one of the Phoenix area’s most generous philanthropists, had a deep personal interest in Castle Hot Springs. She knew most of the prominent guests who had been coming to the famed resort for many decades and was long active in its management.

“I had for some time envisioned Castle Hot Springs as a wonderful site for an academic conference center — a think tank and research facility,’’ Talley said. “In 1973 I made the decision to present it to Arizona State University. I knew that our long-time guests would miss making their annual trek to Arizona — the Pew family of Philadelphia were especially unhappy with the decision — but I felt that the time had come to make the gift.”

But what should the foundation do with this unexpected windfall? And should the gift be accepted at all, in view of the considerable costs that would be involved in refurbishing and operating the facility?

For more than a decade to come, the problems and opportunities of Castle Hot Springs were destined to occupy the time and energy of the ASU Foundation.

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the Castle Hot Springs dilemma Denis Kigin, whose ASU responsibilities included oversight of the University Extension Division and summer sessions, recalled Dec. 20, 1976 with great clarity. That was the day when he, President Schwada and Bill Mallender of Talley Industries flew to Castle Hot Springs in a helicopter to view the property Talley had offered to the university. The property was located in a valley surrounded by the rocky cliffs and crags of the Bradshaw Mountains. Not too many people at ASU knew the resort existed, but even on that short visit Kigin could see the possibilities for a conference center.

The main attractions of the 165-acre resort were its 125,000-gallon swimming pool, 550 palm trees and flowing hot springs.

Fire, probably originating in faulty electrical wiring, had destroyed the Palm House, the central administration building and dining hall at the resort, only nine days before. The loss was insured, but it was evident that considerable rebuilding and refurbishing would be necessary.

The big attraction of the 165-acre setting was its spring, flowing at 400,000 gallons a day at a temperature of 120 degrees. It was bubbling up, as it had for untold centuries, bringing relaxation and healing to all who bathed in it. Wounded American Indian warriors had recuperated here, and in the 1880s a number of Anglo health seekers had camped around the spring.

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As central Arizona’s first major winter resort — opened in 1896 — Castle Hot Springs had attracted many of the great names in early 20th-century America: Rockefellers, Wrigleys, President Theodore Roosevelt, Vanderbilts, Astors, Cabots and McCormicks had spent vacations in the secluded splendor of the springs. Many arrived in private railroad cars, which they parked on a siding at Morristown before embarking on the bone-jarring five-hour stagecoach ride to the hotel.

“President Schwada seemed impressed with the hotel and all its amenities,” remembered Kigin, “and he asked me, ‘If we decide to accept it, will you operate it as a conference center?’”

Although busy with his other ASU assignments, Kigin accepted his new role. It proved to be nearly a full-time job in itself, but he was so intrigued by the possibilities of the historic spa that he viewed it as a worthy challenge.

“I don’ t remember that President Schwada ever came out to visit Castle Hot Springs again,” said Kigin, “but at least he was moderately supportive.”

Talley made her gift to the ASU Foundation, and it was a foundation project from the beginning. The board, after a rather lengthy discussion, voted to accept the gift at a meeting on Feb. 1, 1977, and to operate it as an educational conference center under the direction of Kigin. There was some opposition, but the majority was willing to take on this new responsibility.

Over the years, many of foundation board members became so enamored with the Castle Hot Springs venture that they volunteered untold hours to help it succeed. “Of all those leaders 74

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Castle Hot Springs attracted many of the great names in early 20th-century America: Rockefellers, Wrigleys, President Theodore Roosevelt, Vanderbilts, Astors, Cabots and McCormicks, all of who spent vacations in the secluded splendor of the springs.

who helped, I think Ted Riggins, Jack Whiteman, Allen Rosenberg, Rusty Lyon — and later Kax Herberger — were the most supportive of all,” Kigin declared. “They came out to the resort many times, obtained building materials and supplies, worked and remained optimistic through our many troubles.”

Several ASU administrators also were big boosters: Carl Miller, Charles Woolf, Alan Matheson, Glenn Overman, Del Weber and Bill Huizingh, to name a few. Andy Mills, the motor pool manager, was a big help, as was George Morrell, ASU’s veteran purchasing director. There was considerable interest in the property from other ASU departments.

Michael Sheridan, professor of physics, said the springs might be an ideal source of geothermal energy. The alumni association devoted considerable space in an issue of its magazine to the proposal that Castle Hot Springs be used as a site for geological and botanical studies — as well as a meeting place for graduates.

Not everybody thought the acquisition was a good idea, however. Several board members and some ASU administrators viewed the project as too risky — too expensive for the revenue it might generate. With each setback the foundation encountered, their voices grew louder.

But the frequent problems only steeled the resolve of those who were determined to make the conference center succeed.

One of the first hurdles Kigin faced was that of accessibility. The resort could be reached from two directions. One was from Phoenix along a sometimes treacherous dirt and gravel road that had Castle Creek flowing across it. The other was a roundabout way via Morristown, on State Route 89 southeast of Wickenburg. This route also finished on an unpaved road.

By air, visitors could fly in by helicopter, landing on a pad that Lyon developed, or by fixed-wing airplane using a strip bulldozed out of the desert a mile or more from the hotel.

The loss of the main dining room to the ravages of fire presented an especially daunting challenge. Bill and Jackie Brown, the resident caretakers, mobilized their crews and, with the help of several foundation members, built a new dining facility.

Soon it became evident that a conference center would require a larger meeting room than Castle Hot Springs offered. So the Browns and Kigin tore out walls from a dormitory room and converted the space to a conference facility.

“We begged, borrowed and occasionally scrounged the paint and lumber,” Kigin recalled. “Then I got a call one day from Ted Riggins, who told me they were tearing out a carpet in rooms near his Phoenix law office.

‘Do we want it for Castle Hot Springs?’ he asked me. I assured him that we did. Together we hauled rolls of carpet out to the hotel and, with some carpeting from other donors, we got the floors covered in style.”

None of these alternatives was especially convenient, and a number of prospective conference planners and hosts decided not to bring their meetings to Castle Hot Springs because of the difficulty in getting there.

Another hurdle was keeping staff at such a remote site. Cooks, groundskeepers, maids, maintenance men — all stayed awhile and then decided they would be happier where there was more action. The quiet and isolation that lured the rich and famous in previous decades now became a problem. To add to the frustration of boosters, the first two years brought some of the wettest weather in decades, making the roads impassable for days at a time.

Bob Ellis, general manager of ASU’s public television station KAET, brought a conference of television executives to the springs, but the rains came, washing out the roads and stranding the attendees for several days. Those who could afford it sent for helicopters to rescue them, but the rest could only wait it out.

Nestled in the rugged hills northwest of downtown Phoenix, Castle Hot Springs’ water flow was 400,000 gallons per day at a temperature of 120 degrees.

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Kigin found himself doing work he had never anticipated. When state legislators convened there on one occasion, he helped serve coffee for an early breakfast. That bit of unselfish service was not only unappreciated, it brought him a stinging reprimand from a legislator who reported to Schwada that a man in Kigin’s executive position should have more important things to do than serve coffee to conference guests.

On behalf of ASU and the foundation, Kigin named or renamed many buildings at Castle Hot Springs. The main administration center he christened the Kennedy Center. There were the Wrigley and Rockefeller housing facilities, McCormick Place and Carnegie Hall, named in honor of famed guests of the past. The bar became the Lost Dutchman Saloon.

Bookings at the conference center came in slowly during the early months. It was October 1977 when the first conference was held: a meeting of teacher-education leaders. During the first year only 17 meetings were booked, which, as expected, did not produce enough revenue to cover the costs of operation. The naysayers were beginning to grumble.

But at the Nov. 30 meeting of the foundation board, Kigin was happy to report that business for the second year of the conference center totaled 38 bookings, an increase of more than 100 percent from the previous calendar. His joy was short-lived. Hardly had he finished his report when Schwada rose and suggested the foundation sell Castle Hot Springs.

Kigin was dumbfounded.

“The board decided to persevere,” he remembered years later, “but I could see that it was going to be a struggle to keep the conference center alive.”

Castle Hot Springs was not the only subject of interest to the ASU Foundation in the last years of the 1970s. At its annual membership meeting on Jan. 5, 1978, the foundation presented as its featured speaker Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana, and eight new members were added to the board.

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Castle Hot Springs brochure

In December 1978 Ted Riggins was elected chairman of the board. Vice chairmen were Wally Craig, Jack Whiteman and Rex Staley; Ed Carson was treasurer; Wayne Legg was secretary; and Kay Gammage served as associate secretary. Carl Miller continued as president.

The deferred giving program, which had become a pillar of foundation fundraising, had been launched in 1975 when Tempe resident Elmo Gerber obtained a pooledincome fund unitrust and life annuity in exchange for 11 acres of land on Apache Boulevard. The property was valued at approximately $400,000. Under terms of the agreement, Gerber and his family were to receive a 5-percent annuity from the foundation. Not long afterward, the deferred gifts committee, chaired by Riggins, reported that a campaign was being inaugurated to encourage more deferred gifts.

In his 1981 report to the foundation board, Bud Dooley, director of planned giving, said 91 people had pledged deferred donations that would eventually total more than $18 million. Miller reported at the end of 1979

that land acquisitions were corning in at an increasing pace. Families as far away as Sedona in the north and Sulfur Springs Valley in southern Arizona were working with the real estate committee.

Away from the ASU Foundation and the university’s classroom and research labs, the Sun Devils’ outstanding intercollegiate athletics programs had long attracted devoted friends and generous donors.

Its football teams, beginning with Dan Devine’s success as head coach in 1955–57 and continuing for the next 20 years under Frank Kush, filled Sun Devil Stadium and generated national publicity. Kush teams not only beat the rival University of Arizona Wildcats with monotonous regularity, they defeated Nebraska and other powers as well.

Son of a western Pennsylvania coal miner, Kush had earned All-America honors as a Michigan State lineman before becoming Devine’s line coach in 1955.

When he succeeded Devine as ASU’s head coach in 1958 he employed his tough, physical style in molding hundreds of future professional stars.

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To avoid a heated or prolonged scene, Craig stopped it with his observation that “the matter is now in the courts, so our discussion of it would be untimely.” Sam Mardian assured Crowder that “it is the purpose of the ASU Foundation to support the institution.” Unpopular as the handling of the Kush case was in the eyes of many foundation members, there would be no slackening of its efforts on behalf of the university.

Crowder did have more pleasant news to report in his message to the board a few months later.

The new ASU Science and Engineering Library was to be named for a man who had been a driving force in the early years of the foundation: Daniel Noble. That news brought cheers of appreciation from the assembled members.

Frank Kush became coach of the Sun Devils in 1958.

He is credited with building ASU’s reputation as a major contender in collegiate football. In this 1965 photo, Kush is carried off by the team after a 7-6 homecoming victory over Washington State.

Storm clouds, however, rolled in over A Mountain.

In October 1979 the university and the ASU Foundation were stunned by the news that Athletic Director Fred Miller, with the concurrence of President Schwada, had fired the idolized Kush only hours before a crucial game with the University of Washington. The reason: Kush was alleged to have slapped a Sun Devil player, who announced that he was going to sue his coach and university. Kush supporters were so angry that Miller required a police guard at the Washington game that evening.

Later, Miller himself was ousted from the athletic directorship and Schwada’s popularity took a decided downturn.

“I wish I could report on something besides Coach Kush’s dismissal,” declared Crowder, representing Schwada at the Oct. 16 meeting of the foundation board. “But I will try to answer your questions about the matter.”

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Castle Hot Springs was, at the same time, the most valuable asset in the foundation inventory, but also its most aggravating problem.

At the end of 1981, the historic hotel was carried on the foundation books at a value of $1.3 million, which accounted for most of the asset total of $1.7 million. Talley’s magnificent gift had great potential, many believed, but until that potential could be realized, its operating costs were threatening to sink the foundation in a sea of red ink. Despite the near-heroic efforts of Kigin and other true believers to increase Castle Hot Springs revenues, it was losing money every year, and at a frightening pace.

Restricted foundation money was being used to keep it operational, a procedure that threatened to undermine the foundation’s tax-exempt status.

The seemingly unrelated problem of Frank Kush’s summary firing could not have come at a worse time for the foundation and Castle Hot Springs. Many friends of the university were also admirers of Kush, and a frightening number of them were so incensed at the manner in which his dismissal had been handled that they put away their checkbooks. Financial records show that the Kush affair severely hampered giving to the university for at least five years. By the end of 1979, foundation board members were becoming increasingly pessimistic about

Chapter Eight - The Castle Hot Springs Dilemma

Castle Hot Springs, and efforts to find a potential buyer were accelerated. Kigin kept a stiff upper lip, however, and continued to bring in more income while doing all he could to improve the physical facilities. Seminars and conferences were held well into 1982.

Meanwhile, Carl Miller was working with Schwada and other senior university officers to lay the groundwork for an ambitious capital campaign.

This mammoth effort, the first of its magnitude ever attempted by the university, was certain to need the enthusiastic cooperation of the administration, the foundation, alumni and friends of ASU. Unfortunately, Miller was handicapped by a less-than-enthusiastic response. The administration never committed enough financial support or staff, many of the deans were lukewarm toward Miller, and the foundation board believed the campaign goals were unrealistically high. To make Miller’s task even more difficult, Schwada retired as president, J. Russell Nelson succeeded him, and Provost Paige Mulhollan made it clear that he would rather have another man directing the campaign. Miller, he believed, was not energetic or aggressive enough to get the job done.

He was right. But Miller could take pride in several accomplishments during his tenure as the first professional director of development in ASU’s history.

“I was able to install the concept of centralized control over solicitation of gifts to the university,” he said. “Until that time, it was every dean and director for him or herself. For the first time, we built a good staff structure in the development office and set up a workable records system. And, we laid the foundation for the university’s first major capital campaign.”

Miller agreed to stay on as a staff member for six months after being replaced as development director, long enough to help launch the campaign. A colleague described his contribution to ASU in these words: “Carl was always a gentleman, and always a professional — a man who knew development from long experience and shared his knowledge with others. He was not as aggressive and outgoing as he might have been and he labored under the handicap of minimal institutional support. But he deserves credit for the accomplishments he achieved.”

“I had promised President Schwada that I would stay on until the campaign was launched,” Miller said years later, “but Mulhollan had other ideas.”

Mulhollan proved to be a man of keen intellect and a passion for getting things done, but he had little regard for the human factors in any equation. He went to work dismantling many existing university operational structures and substituting new ones, often to the dismay of officers who had been serving the institution faithfully for many years.

“It seemed that he wanted everybody to report to him,” remembered Miller, “but I wouldn’t do it. I told him that I had been reporting to Troy Crowder ever since I had come to ASU, and wanted to continue doing so. From that moment on, in the late fall of 1981, I felt sure my days as development director were numbered.”

Coach Frank Kush (right) poses for cameras to mark the first Fiesta Bowl in 1971, which pitted ASU against Florida State. The crowd-pleasing game was attended by more than 51,000 fans, who watched ASU in a thrilling 45-38 victory.

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out of the blue Lonnie Ostrom’s telephone in the College of Business Administration rang at about 10 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1982. The voice at the other end of the line was that of Provost Paige Mulhollan and his message was straightforward.

“Lonnie,” he blurted, “I understand you have been doing some fundraising consulting, and you’re pretty good at it. How would you like to be ASU’s new director of development?”

Built in 1968, the fountain in the middle of the Tempe campus is located at the intersection of Orange and Cady malls and replaced the Old Main fountain as the community meeting place.

There was a brief moment of amazed silence at Ostrom’s end. Ostrom had been serving as professor of marketing and assistant dean, then associate dean, of the College of Business Administration since 1973 and had been consulting for the American City Bureau. One of his responsibilities in the business college was helping Interim Dean Bill Reif plan a major fund campaign for the college. He had discussed some of those fundraising plans with Mulhollan six months earlier, but neither Mulhollan nor any other senior officer had hinted that he was under consideration to succeed Carl Miller as development director.

“I don’t know,” Ostrom replied to Mulhollan’s query, trying to regain his composure. “I would need to do some thinking about it, talk with my family, my dean and others. How much time do I have to give you an answer?”

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“Until tomorrow morning at eight,” Mulhollan declared.

“I’m going to fire Carl Miller then.” After a few more words — none of them mentioning salary, budget, staff or responsibilities — Mulhollan ended the conversation. Twenty-four hours later, Ostrom, became the new director of development, and the next day he was meeting with the development staff.

Mulhollan had done his homework. He knew that Ostrom had earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, where he played varsity basketball; had earned his master’s degree at Southern Illinois University, and his doctorate at the University of Alabama. Mulhollan had been aware of Ostrom’s work as director of the Master of Business Administration program, and his administrative skills as assistant and associate dean. He knew that Ostrom had conducted successful fund campaigns for the YMCA and other organizations. He knew, too, that Ostrom was young, energetic, personable and ambitious.

Dozens of bicycles parked in front of Hayden Library, 1984

What he had learned convinced the provost that Ostrom was the man to lead the development office and conduct the capital campaign that was so important to ASU financial planning.

And Mulhollan knew that Ostrom should be president of the ASU Foundation.

“Paige’s call came out of the blue,” Ostrom recalled. “I was happy in the College of Business Administration, where I had been serving for nearly nine years, and I had enjoyed a good relationship with both Dean Glenn Overman and the interim dean, Bill Reif, who had succeeded Glenn six months earlier.

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“I knew the new job would be an important advancement to my career, and that it would give me an opportunity to become much better acquainted with leaders of the entire university and, really, of the Phoenix metropolitan area. But I also knew that it involved much more stress and would take me away from my family, perhaps for days at a time. It was not an easy decision to make, but I never regretted accepting the challenge.”

Ostrom and Reif had been two of a kind: workaholics, optimists and setters of high personal goals. In September 1981 they had finalized plans for a College of Business Administration fund campaign that was to raise $10 million to $12 million. The dean’s council of the college, chaired by Denis Mitcham, was shocked at the magnitude of the proposal — so much so that members refused to approve it until it had been trimmed to more manageable size.

“I had some grandiose hopes for ASU fundraising when I began working as development director,” Ostrom observed, “and we were able to reach, and even exceed, the goals that seemed so impossible at the outset. But in the beginning it hardly seemed possible. Except for Castle Hot Springs, which we were trying very hard to sell, we had less than half a million dollars in foundation assets.

The Daniel E. Noble Science and Engineering Library opened in 1983. The library houses collections in engineering, physical and life sciences, mathematics, nursing and health sciences, and geography.

“President Schwada never had been very enthusiastic about tax-supported universities seeking private gifts and had rarely called on potential donors.

President Nelson was more supportive of the development effort, but he hated to go out himself and ask for money. It was not until Lattie Coor succeeded him that we had a university president who really went all out to seek private support and place the prestige of the presidency behind our efforts.

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Chapter Nine - Out of the Blue

“Because few of the ASU deans had been leaders in universities with aggressive fundraising programs, they had little experience in supporting university-wide campaigns. Our ASU Foundation board had no concept of what was necessary to bring in multimillion-dollar gifts, and Phoenix-area business and community leaders thought I was a crazy optimist to dream of such goals. It had taken us years to get people thinking that such things as $300 million campaigns were possible.”

Ostrom leaned heavily on Kay Gammage, who seemed to know everybody of means and importance in central Arizona, to introduce him to the movers and shakers of the community. For months, they met with potential donors, attended dinners and meetings almost every evening and worked at building bridges between community leaders and ASU.

At the same time, he was working equally hard to win over his own foundation board, deans and vice presidents of the university and prominent ASU alumni.

He soon discovered there was little interaction among these vital segments of the university family, so he labored diligently to cement those relationships.

“I always believed that you must make friends and build confidence before you can hope to succeed in asking for major gifts,” Ostrom said. “That takes time, and I never stopped developing those friendships.”

Lynda Lumpkin is a rarity — one of the few people at ASU who played an active role in development under both the Miller and Ostrom regimes. Having served as secretary to both directors, she was in a unique position to assess the personalities and working methods of both men.

“I came to the campus in January 1979 as Carl Miller’s secretary — three years before Lonnie Ostrom succeeded him,” Lumpkin recalled. “I was an Oklahoma girl who moved to Pennsylvania and came with my airline-pilot husband to Arizona in 1972. So I had been around the area for some time.

“Mr. Miller was always a quiet gentleman and quite formal. He never called me anything except ‘Mrs. Lumpkin.’ He spent most of his time in his office and didn’t often go out to solicit money. We had eleven people on the office of development staff when I came. Mrs. Gammage, Bud Dooley, Joe Carr, Dennis Eloe, Frank Belting and Leah Roberts were the people I remember best. Mr. Miller knew a great deal about the business of foundations and fundraising, and he was always courteous to his staff. But we seemed to understand that this office was strictly business and there was to be little informality or fooling around here. Also, he maintained a careful separation between the development professionals and Philomathian Bench on the ASU Tempe campus, 1990

the office staff. We didn’t often cross the line.

And I never met Mrs. Miller.

“We were all in one room at the old Sands Hotel, which had been renamed Mariposa Hall. We were in the same facility as the alumni office, but I don’t remember that the two staffs were ever very close. I remember we had a horrible carpet — maroon and gold with a paisley design — awful! Lonnie replaced it when he came, but he kept a piece of it as a souvenir.

“Mrs. Gammage was the personality most people thought of in development. She had a kind of magnetism, and a great presence, that made people listen to her and respect her.

She knew everybody who was anybody. She had been very busy in recent years, organizing support groups for the history department, the libraries, music department, and KAET-TV. When Lonnie came, she gave him entry to those he needed to know. He had an affection for the university when he came to this office, but Mrs. Gammage helped to fan that affection into a burning love of ASU.” Lumpkin was understandably worried when Mulhollan brought Ostrom in to meet the staff and announced that he would be the new development director. She knew very little about him and was concerned that she might not long have a job. But Ostrom soon laid those fears to rest. He relied on Lumpkin to keep him informed about past events and plans for the future.

“Lonnie hadn’t been on board for more than a few days when we realized that the formality of the past had been replaced by a new free and easy way of doing things,” Lumpkin remembered. “Everybody relaxed, the barriers between professionals and office staff came down — along with the row of file cabinets that had kept us apart — and there was more joking and fun than we had ever known.

Lonnie was a kind of clown in many ways, and even Mrs. Gammage loosened up a lot. The office became a really fun place to work.”

Lonnie Ostrom (front row, right) with his foundation staff

Whether the new informality would get the job done was yet to be determined, but for better or worse, things would never be the same in the development office.

One of Ostrom’s first goals was to strengthen the board of the ASU Foundation by giving members more meaningful work to do and improving attendance at board meetings, which never had been exemplary.

During his first two months in office, Ostrom spent time meeting one-on-one with each board member, getting to know him or her and learning what steps the foundation should take to become more effective.

Ostrom soon found that many board members, especially those who had served for many years, had a deep affection for the ASU Foundation. Charlie Wetzler, who had been a leader since the agriculture council days, collared him after one meeting and declared: “Young man, you must take good care of this foundation!” Wetzler’s admonition was repeated, in various ways, by the venerable Cowden, Staley, and other old-timers.

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Named for the associate athletic director and women’s swim coach (1957-79), Mona Plummer, the aquatic center was state of the art when it was built in 1981.

Riggins, the Phoenix attorney, was chairman of the foundation board when Ostrom arrived and proved an invaluable ally. He knew the foundation’s history and gave Ostrom a crash course on the subject.

Foundation officers and ASU executives started working in earnest to make the impending capital campaign a success.

Ostrom found, however, that there were difficult public relations hurdles to surmount.

Rusty Lyon, Libby Williams, Jack Whiteman, and Budd Peabody were especially helpful to him. So were Rod McMullin, Solly Sollenberger, Ed Carson and others. Riney Salmon drafted revised bylaws for the foundation. Every member of the board expressed his or her support.

“One of my first visits was with Jim Simmons, who headed the United Bank,” Ostrom recalled. “He spoke very frankly and told me that ASU had a lot of work to do to bolster its academic reputation before we could hope to receive big gifts from corporate or private donors. Although the university had made great strides in recent years, the word had not gotten around to many of the potential givers in the state, he said.

None was more supportive than Kax Herberger, who with her husband Bob had already earned an honored niche among Phoenix’s most generous philanthropists.

Kax Herberger succeeded Riggins as chairperson of the foundation board in July 1982, and performed yeoman service in revitalizing the board.

“Kax was a key figure in the foundation for many years,” Ostrom said in later years. “I will always be grateful to Kay Gammage for persuading her to serve on our board. Kax was held in such high esteem that nobody on the board dared disappoint her or let her down. Attendance at board meetings soared under her leadership, from about 30 percent to more than 70 percent, and committees worked harder than ever before.”

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“Others remembered our institution as the teachers college it was 40 years earlier, or as the ‘party school’ that some national magazines had labeled it. We found we had a lot of informing and selling to do.”

Riggins held a special place in Ostrom’s esteem. Not only was he a knowledgeable and tireless leader on behalf of ASU and its foundation, he was a man with a talent for making people feel appreciated. He always had a smile and sometimes a funny story, and he lightened many a foundation social event by playing his ukulele and singing.

Chapter Nine - Out of the Blue

“Several years after he completed his term as chairman, he was attending a meeting of the board at Phoenix Country Club. I happened to be looking his way when I saw him slowly sag in his seat and then slide to the floor. It was a terrifying moment. We all rushed to help him, but he had suffered a fatal heart attack. It was my terribly difficult job to call Mrs. Riggins and tell her that her husband was dead.

“We all missed Ted and were always grateful for all he did for the foundation.”

The ASU Foundation board minutes of Feb. 17, 1983, state that “Dr. Ostrom reported the sale of Castle Hot Springs to Sherri Chessen, Barbara VanEss and a third party for $2.65 million.”

Behind that terse announcement was a lengthy story, one that was to continue for four more years.

“The Castle Hot Springs problem was the biggest one I had to face in my early years with the foundation,” Ostrom said. “We had to sell the property, and quickly, if we were to avoid serious trouble. Our savior in that troubled situation was Rusty Lyon, who spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to find a buyer. He came to me one day and said that Sherri Chessen and Barbara VanEss, both well known in Scottsdale, had agreed to buy Castle Hot Springs. The arrangement was that they would make an initial payment, get the property ready for occupancy as a resort hotel and pay off the remaining balance over a period of time.”

Everybody breathed a giant sigh of relief, confident that the long-festering thorn in the side of the foundation at last had been removed. But there was trouble ahead. In violation of the sale agreement, the potential owners started tearing down bath houses and other structures, to the consternation of foundation board members. What was worse, the date for the second payment came and went with no money forthcoming. The third pay date also was missed. Despite efforts to persuade the buyers to honor their agreement, the foundation received no more money. The property had been misrepresented to them, the buyers argued, and was even in a different township than that shown on the deed.

“We were forced to take the buyers to court, and a long legal battle ensued,” Ostrom recalled years after. “Finally, more than two years later, we got Castle Hot Springs back and had to return to square one, looking for a new buyer.

It was all very frustrating.”

Luckily for all concerned, Charles Trainer, a resident of Madison, Wis., and a grandson of the Miller Brewing Company founder, entered the cloudy picture. He owned a small ranch near the property, had come to Castle Hot Springs as a child with his family and had always cherished the idea that someday he might restore it to its former glory.

As soon as the foundation regained possession, Ostrom called Trainer and told him that Castle Hot Springs was once more available for purchase. Trainer came out to look over the property, liked what he saw and expressed a strong interest in buying the place.

The sale was completed on Nov. 13, 1987.

Ostrom kept a replica of the check encased in glass for safekeeping. The amount: $3.02 million.

This time the transfer of Castle Hot Springs was for keeps. The ASU Foundation treasury was healthy once more and a long-festering problem was solved.

“Worrisome as the Castle Hot Springs affair was for all of us, it had one good result,” Ostrom declared. “It bonded the foundation board to the university as nothing had before, or is likely to again.”

Ostrom’s replica check

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chapter ten

did you say $75 million?

Those familiar with Arizona State University history were aware that the institution’s total operating budget in its first year of operation was just $5,000. Many others in the university family of 1984 had been around long enough to remember when the annual budget was less than $500,000.

The ASU Art Museum is a large complex of galleries, art study rooms and outdoor exhibit spaces.

So it was breathtaking news when ASU President J. Russell Nelson — who was assured by his development director that the figure was not a wild dream — announced that the goal for the forthcoming fund drive, called “Campaign for ASU,” would be $75 million.

The J. Russell and Bonita Nelson Fine Arts Center Art Museum in Tempe

Many were the skeptics who muttered “Yeah, sure!” or words to that effect. Not many months before, several Phoenix business leaders had cautioned Ostrom that a proposed $10 million campaign was beyond the realm of reality. Others worried that a campaign for such an impossibly lofty goal as $75 million was likely to fail miserably, and that the resulting embarrassment would make future fundraising efforts that much more chancy. Why not set the bar at a height that could be reasonably cleared?

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Chapter Ten - Did You Say $75 Million?

Grady Gammage had heard just such predictions of disaster when he launched the ASU name-change campaign 26 years earlier. And they had worried him as much as this new challenge worried Nelson and Ostrom. But they decided to take the risk and charge ahead. History records that the results of Gammage’s leap of faith were even more glorious and far-reaching than he could have imagined. Now, in 1984, ASU’s leaders and their community supporters decided to take the big risk once again.

A major capital campaign had long been a dream of the university and the ASU Foundation. A 1974 memorandum prepared by foundation president Miller outlined his plans for the university’s first major campaign. Miller continued to lay groundwork for the campaign during the next seven years, and he later counted that preparation among his major

achievements at ASU. Included in Miller’s stated goals were endowed chairs, professorships, an art museum, theater, planetarium and support for minor sports.

Miller presented his plan at the November 1974 meeting of the ASU Foundation board of directors. His hope, he said, was to raise $5 million per year toward a long-range total of $42 million. Board members expressed admiration for Miller’s optimism, although few if any believed that such a lofty goal was attainable.

But the seed had been sown, and it sprouted slowly and painfully each year until the end of Miller’s tenure at ASU. There was much talk but disappointingly little action during those years, either in the foundation or on the university campus. The campaign plans continued to be discussed and revised, but they remained on paper, neatly encased in file folders.

While the capital-fund campaign plans languished, the need for private funding was growing at an unprecedented pace.

Enrollment at the university exceeded 35,000 and several of its colleges were achieving national recognition, although faculty salaries lagged behind those of comparable institutions, hampering efforts to attract professorial stars and their accompanying multi-million-dollar research grants. New buildings, high-tech centers, computer facilities, fine arts facilities, endowed chairs — all were urgently needed if ASU hoped to take its place among the leading public universities of the nation.

Needs for additional funding were far exceeding the ability of the state legislature to meet them. The university had arrived at a historic crossroads. With private support far beyond any previously provided, ASU could enter a new era of excellence. Without it, the university was likely to plod along in mediocrity.

The “Pitchfork” is a widely known hand gesture associated with ASU’s mascot, Sparky.

President Nelson and Paige Mulhollan, now the university executive vice president, could see that something dramatic was needed to rouse the ASU Foundation, Phoenix area corporate leaders and wealthy individuals. Even on campus, deans and other leaders needed a shot of adrenaline to get them energized for the arduous task ahead.

Bringing Ostrom from the College of Business Administration to the development office and the presidency of the ASU Foundation was their solution. To those not acquainted with Ostrom and his success as a fundraising consultant, the move must have seemed risky, indeed. He never had served as a development director or headed a major campaign, and he was not well known to those corporate chiefs and major donors in the Phoenix area whose support was absolutely essential to the campaign’s success.

But Nelson and Mulhollan had been watching this young man’s activities for some time and were convinced that his energy, knowledge of fundraising strategies, organizational abilities and willingness to work seven days a week to achieve a goal would make up for any deficiencies.

Their 1982 decision to gamble everything on Ostrom proved to be a fortunate one for all concerned.

Ostrom devoted his first weeks in office to learning all he could about the development office and to becoming better acquainted with ASU vice presidents, deans and other executives.

At the same time, Kay Gammage was conducting an intensive schedule of introducing him to community leaders. Three months after taking his new job, Ostrom told the foundation board about his crash course and what he had discovered about ASU and its supporters.

“I have learned more about this university in the past 12 weeks than in the previous nine years of my association with the College of Business Administration,” he declared.

Sparky, fireworks and student pride on display in ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium

Some of what he had learned was disconcerting. Not one of the deans had ever been involved in a major capital campaign and no one in the administration knew much about what to do or how to do it. Dean Roland Haden in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences had developed good relationships with the corporate community and had raised money for programs in his college. Overman had recently retired as dean of the College of Business Administration and had developed support from business executives, but not on a scale envisioned in a capital campaign. None of the other colleges had been successful in attracting big gifts. The fundraising that had gone on was principally for individual colleges and not for the university as a whole.

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Game day at Sun Devil Stadium

The development office staff, loyal and eager though they were, had never been involved in a campaign of this size. The ASU Alumni Association had been in the fundraising business for years, but had attracted relatively few major gifts.

The ASU Foundation had been helpful for several decades but had resources of less than $3 million in early 1982, and most of that sum represented the Talley gift of Castle Hot Springs. Even ASU’s most staunch supporters on the foundation board were doubtful that community leaders and wealthy donors considered the university worthy of the major gifts that would be necessary to make a capital campaign succeed.

Miller’s goal of $40 million was considered impossibly optimistic. Despite all the negatives he faced, Ostrom forged ahead.

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During three years of preparation for the capital campaign, the foundation had several indispensable board members, and none was more valuable than chairwoman Kax Herberger. She had come to Phoenix from the Midwest — from Minnesota via Chicago — with her husband, Bob, in 1949. It was an exciting and challenging period in the life of the Salt River Valley, when Phoenix and its satellite cities were growing at an unprecedented pace. Growth was bringing about seemingly insurmountable problems as well as amazing new opportunities.

The Herbergers became deeply involved in building post-World War II Arizona. They gave unstintingly of their time, talents and money, and soon earned a place among the Valley’s premier philanthropists. The Herberger Theater in downtown Phoenix is perhaps the best known of their many gifts to the people of this area.

Kax Herberger and Gammage became

Chapter Ten - Did You Say $75 Million?

close friends, and it was Gammage who in 1971 played a major role in persuading Herberger to become a member of the ASU Foundation board.

She became chairperson of the board in early 1982, shortly after Ostrom became president of the foundation and director of development at ASU. It was only natural that the first capital campaign, then in its planning stage, became a major concern during the three years she chaired the foundation.

“Bob and I had been supporters of the University of Minnesota for many years,” she recalled, “but when we moved to Phoenix we soon shifted our allegiance to Arizona State University. Our particular interest has been in the arts, but we have supported many other university activities.”

Her fellow board members stated that that she ran a taut ship and was able to make each meeting meaningful and informative. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and attendance improved with each session.

Ostrom persuaded her to remain as chair until the campaign was officially announced, and credited her with making an important contribution to its early success.

“I had always hated to ask people to give money,” Herberger declared. “My role was more in planning, identifying prospects, building relationships and going with others to call on people we hoped would make major gifts. I soon found it very interesting and an exciting challenge to help in bringing those gifts to reality.”

In 1985, not long after Nelson publicly launched the Campaign for ASU, Herberger passed the torch of ASU Foundation board leadership to Peabody, whose devotion to the campaign was a major factor in meeting its goal, then exceeding it by $39 million.

The university and the foundation had a big selling point that year: ASU’s centennial celebration.

Throughout 1984 and well into 1985, centennial events on and off campus kept the university in the public eye. So closely was the campaign tied to the celebration that it was originally named “The Centennial Capital Campaign.”

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of the major determinants in establishing the academic-priority needs, it will be necessary that students, alumni, corporate community leaders and prospective major donors have input into each of the colleges’ recommendations to the central administration.”

Ostrom recognized the value of that tie-in as soon as he took over the foundation presidency. In a letter to Vice President Jack Kissinger, dated Sept. 9, 1982, he wrote that “Jules Heller and Kay Woit, director and associate director, respectively, of the Centennial Planning Commission, have put together a strong and respected Centennial Committee of 100 community, alumni and university leaders. In addition, the initial planning for many of the programs, performances and activities to commemorate this significant occasion is well under way.”

He went on to note that “the Centennial celebration provides Arizona State University with the opportunity to undertake an intensive fundraising effort.

An underlying premise of this major financial development program is that it not only will enable ASU to effectively mark its centennial, but also to strengthen and unify the thrust of its development activities through a strategy that concentrates efforts on a select group of stated university-wide funding needs.”

How those needs were to be identified was much on his mind. He believed that the process should begin at the department level in all academic units of the university and should be analyzed and finalized by the central administration.

Then he made an all-important point — one that guided Ostrom’s fundraising strategies moving forward: “While the faculty and administration will be two 94

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Ostrom believed these off-campus constituencies must feel a sense of ownership — of being a part of the enterprise — if they were to be persuaded to make substantial gifts to the university.

The growing needs of the university caused the foundation to begin planning for ASU’s first comprehensive campaign in the early 1980s.

This community-wide effort expanded the role of the foundation to include identifying major gift prospects and ensuring that the assets of the foundation were managed to maximize returns and protect investments.

Under the leadership of President Nelson and ASU Foundation board members Kax Herberger, Budd Peabody and Bob Bulla, the Centennial Campaign for ASU raised more than $114 million and increased foundation assets from $3.1 million to $28.5 million.

Other highlights of the campaign included: •

• •

• •

Lead gift of $2 million to establish Karsten Golf Course, a $6 million capital investment.

The Sundome Performing Arts Center from Del E. Webb Corporation.

More than $30 million in land and construction funds, including the Nelson Fine Arts Center on the Tempe campus and the Sands Classroom Building and Fletcher Library on the ASU West campus.

More than $12 million in new scholarship funding.

The Robert B. Dalton Endowed Chair in Cancer Research — the first endowed chair position at ASU — in addition to almost $10 million in other endowed faculty positions.

Chapter Ten - Did You Say $75 Million?

As every fund campaign director knows, many of the major pledges must be secured well before the public announcement of the drive is made.

One of the first big gifts was the ASU Centennial Chair, presented by a 1921 graduate of the Tempe Normal School, Ronella Kruse Marshall Jones. Her $1 million pledge was announced to the foundation board at its October 1983 meeting. Later, with Jones’ consent, her gift was used for student scholarships instead of a professorial chair.

At that same meeting, Duke Tully, publisher of Phoenix’s two major newspapers, announced the creation of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunications in ASU’s College of Public Programs. The first $55,000 of the school’s funding had already been raised, he said. Cronkite, the most honored figure in the history of American broadcast journalism, had agreed to lend his name to the endeavor and participate in its activities as much as his busy schedule would permit.

Fundraising also was well under way for the John J. Rhodes Chair in political science, with $100,000 pledged. The chair was named in honor of Arizona’s 30-year congressman and former U.S. House of Representatives minority leader.

Ostrom announced to the board the foundation’s investment portfolio now exceeded $6 million — more than double its value of the previous year — and recommended that an investment advisor be hired to manage the fund.

Foundation members were buoyed by this barrage of good news and they participated in the capital fund drive with new enthusiasm and optimism.

Because the ASU Foundation had traditionally been viewed as ASU’s principal bridge to the community and the custodian of gifts to the university, rather than as an aggressive fundraising entity, Ostrom realized development office staff were carrying burdens they weren’t trained to bear. He knew the university needed to hire additional staff members with development experience.

President Nelson, who was committed to the campaign, agreed to provide funding for new hires — funding that had been sorely lacking in the development program for many years.

In 1983, as plans for the Campaign for ASU were being developed, Ostrom brought on board two new staff members, Tere Montrose-Mendoza and Patrick Burkhart. Both proved to be excellent choices and Ostrom gave them much of the credit for the campaign’s success. Mendoza came to ASU from Washington, D.C., where she had served on two senatorial staffs and had raised funds through the National Association of Latino Appointed and Elected Officers. Burkhart had founded and directed the development program for a Toledo, Ohio, hospital. He came to ASU several months after Mendoza, initially serving as the engineering college development officer and then as a member of Ostrom’s staff.

In what Burkhart described later as “a leap of faith,” Nelson authorized the hiring of development officers for many ASU colleges. Engineering was the first, followed by fine arts, business and law. Later liberal arts, architecture, education and nursing joined the list, along with University Libraries and intercollegiate athletics.

It was an impressive investment in the university’s development effort, one which Nelson and other ASU leaders viewed as an investment likely to pay handsome dividends. Ostrom, Mendoza and Burkhart sat on many a candidate screening committee in the hectic years of the mid-1980s, and their judgment proved sound in virtually every case.

But how could such an army of fundraisers be developed into an effective team — one that could work together and prevent members from stepping on each other’s toes as they approached funding agencies, corporate leaders and wealthy individuals?

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Chapter Ten - Did You Say $75 Million?

“That was one of our most pressing problems in the early months of the campaign,” Burkhart recalled. “We brought all the development officers together and in a four-hour meeting hammered out a plan that would divide prospects most logically among the various workers.”

One story in particular shows Mendoza’s personal toughness and commitment to the foundation. During a trip to New York City to assist Nelson in making calls, Mendoza had an experience she would rather not have had. Her cab driver decided to travel through Harlem, where he had a flat tire.

It was not an easy task. Every college naturally wanted to solicit the obvious targets — banks, utilities, corporations.

But representatives of these prospective donors wanted to deal with only one ASU development officer. Some disappointment and irritation was inevitable, but compromises were made, tempers cooled and preparations for solicitations proceeded.

While waiting for the tire to be fixed, Mendoza was pulled from the car and dragged down the street, unwilling to give up her purse. The robber finally used a knife to cut the purse straps.

“We all dived into the Campaign for ASU with almost none of the standard preparation for a major fund drive,” Mendoza said. “Lonnie Ostrom was a Lone Ranger in the effort, pushing ahead on his own without the feasibility study and other preliminaries that are considered necessary for success.”

Mendoza had several key roles. She discovered that many foundation board members knew little about the university and its development activity, and some had only a sketchy knowledge of the foundation. None of the leaders had played a leading role in a university fundraising campaign. So she made it a point to provide information to the directors and to involve them in the campaign. She worked closely with Herberger, Gammage, Budd Peabody, Florence Nelson and several other directors. She wrote grant requests, attended planning meetings and met with donor prospects.

There were few blank spots in her daily calendar, either during office hours or evenings.

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She still kept her meeting with Nelson the next day.

Burkhart also served ably. “I was a foot soldier in the Campaign for ASU,” he said, “working seven days a week for about three years. So did several other development people. The ASU Foundation board members were very helpful and their contacts were invaluable. But most of the planning and execution of the campaign fell to us at the university.”

Burkhart and Mendoza began writing grant proposals for national and regional foundations. That time-consuming effort brought substantial funds into the campaign treasury. Ostrom and other development office leaders looked ahead to future campaigns, which they hoped would be led by the ASU Foundation.

But in the mid-1980s the development people were in charge.

By December 1983, campaign goals and strategies were in place, and a 48-page document outlining all the carefully laid plans was distributed to major participants. In its preamble, the document made this declaration: “All successful major development campaigns share five components: an essential need, a

compelling case, inspired and influential leadership, sufficient major prospects … and good management in organizing and operating the campaign.”

The task was challenging, but everyone at the foundation worked hard to meet the criteria. To be successful as a staff, they knew they had to come together as a team, and they did. Staff meetings were held on Saturday mornings, and everyone showed up. By the end of the campaign, the foundation staff had become a family — there was a special relationship between all involved.

The goal was set at $50-60 million, including all money given to ASU, the ASU Foundation, the Sun Angel Foundation and the Sun Angel Foundation Endowment. “Many of those people who were most directly concerned believed that figure was too high,” Ostrom noted. “I wanted it even higher. But we settled on $50-60 million.”

The prospectus made one point very clear: The goal would never be reached through a broad-based campaign for medium and small gifts. Rather, success depended on large gifts.

It had been decided that principal categories in the fund appeal would be teaching excellence and research, student support and services, educational ventures and ongoing programs, new construction, education equipment, and athletics.

Winning the 1986 Pacific-10 Conference football championship earned the Sun Devils a trip to the 73rd Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. ASU defeated Michigan 22-15 on Jan. 1, 1987, the Sun Devils’ first Rose Bowl victory.

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Among the specifics outlined in the document, some of which changed by the time the campaign was announced, were the building of a fine arts complex for art, theater and music; a Sun City retirement education center; an applied sciences center in the College of Engineering; an alumni center, development office and faculty club; equipment for KAET-TV and the disciplines of law, physics, chemistry, geology and engineering; equipment for students with disabilities; five teaching chairs and 10 professorships; student financial aid; the Centennial Research Institute in the College of Business Administration; and academic centers and programs in several colleges and libraries.

There was something for everybody and enough worthy programs to attract the attention of almost every potential donor.

Many did not know that denizens of Arizona’s largest retirement community were becoming more involved in ASU, and were surprised to see its center included. In 1981 ASU Assistant Professor Herbert Rusalem arranged for ASU to offer courses in Sun City. To everyone’s astonishment, more than 400 residents enrolled in the first semester, and 700 in the second semester.

In its second year of operation, the Sun Cities Education and Research Program enrolled approximately 1,300 students.

Prime movers of the new venture were faculty member Obadiah Harris and development officer Bud Dooley. Professors from the university taught classes in Sun City in cramped quarters, and it was obvious that more adequate facilities were needed.

The Del Webb Corporation, developer of Sun City, offered land for a proposed ASU/Sun Cities teaching center, and more than $1 million was raised for construction.

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The ASU Karsten Golf Course is home to one of the strongest collegiate golf programs in the country, and is named after the Karsten Solheim family.

But Del Webb soon withdrew its offer of free land, which was needed for other purposes.

The ASU/Sun Cities dream faded. In December 1985, however, Webb executives made an even larger contribution to ASU: the Sundome, a mammoth $8.7 million performing arts center in the northwest Valley. ASU and the Sundome Performing Arts Association operated the facility for 20 years, bringing many of the world’s top entertainment attractions, including Bob Dylan, Lawrence Welk, Tony Bennett, B.B. King and Bob Hope. In February 2012, ASU sold the building and property to a retail developer.

During this time, plans were going forward for a golf course adjoining the ASU campus.

Led by G. M. (Solly) Sollenberger, a longtime ASU Foundation board member and later chairman of the board, the drive included many of his board peers. Bob Hobbs, a Sun Angel Foundation member and later a member of the ASU Foundation board, also was involved in identifying prospects, making personal visits and joining Nelson and university officials in contacting potential donors.

One of those prospects, the Karsten Solheim family — Phoenix-based manufacturers of PING golf equipment — funded much of the 18-hole course east of the campus along the south bank of the Salt River. It was named Karsten Golf Course in his honor.

Attorney John Christian, who had served on the ASU Foundation board since 1969 and also as its general counsel for more than 40 years, and who was one of the foundation’s most energetic fundraisers during the capital campaign, years later shared the story behind the Solheim gift.

“I went with President Nelson and the ASU golf coach to talk with the Solheims about a gift for the golf course,” he said. “We must have been quite persuasive, because Mrs. Solheim called me the next morning and said the family wanted to make a major contribution. ‘How much do you think is right?’ she asked me. I had no time to think it over, but I said I thought $2 million would

be appropriate. She agreed immediately. I have often wondered since that time whether I should have asked for more. We might well have gotten it. But I was very grateful for the $2 million.”

The crowning development in the golf course’s birth was the direct result of the efforts of ASU alumnus and supporter Keith Turley. Turley’s enthusiasm for the course and the university — and his leadership of APS (Arizona Public Service Company) — led to the donation of the necessary acreage. Valued at as much as $6 million at the time, the land gift paved the way for construction of what is known today as the “Home of Champions” for the number of national titles won by ASU golf teams.

There were ASU Foundation board members and friends who believed the fund campaign could succeed.

“We set up one-on-one luncheons with executives of Phoenix area corporations to get our story across,” Peabody recalled. “Motorola, Del Webb, the banks, the utilities — all of them agreed to help. Eventually the foundation leadership became convinced that the early campaign goals could be met and even raised.”

Peabody, who served as chairman of the board through most of the capital campaign, said the foundation made every effort to learn about special interests of potential givers.

“We were able to involve many people who had never considered giving to Arizona State University before,” he said. “Board members and friends soon found it an exciting challenge to bring in big gifts, and even those who hated to ask others for money found real satisfaction in doing it.”

Foundation volunteers were particularly valuable in gaining access to the chief executive officers of corporations, Peabody added. In many cases, no one else had the respect and community standing necessary to get to the top corporate decision makers.

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included many of Arizona’s top leaders, several of them members of the ASU Foundation board, as well as well-known names from across the United States. Wayne Doran, Detroit automobile executive, served. So did ASU alum and Major League Baseball star Reggie Jackson; Jim Loper, president of the Public Broadcasting System in Los Angeles; Congressman Cecil Heftel; Motorola’s Bob Galvin; television personality Hugh Downs, and many others of national note.

There were ASU deans’ and faculty cabinets, national alumni and parents’ campaign committees and leadership committees for each of the prospective recipients of campaign funds.

Bulla recalled fondly his many months of campaign service.

This May 2004 sketch helped ASU planners locate the METRO Light Rail system, which runs through the Tempe campus and made its debut in December 2008.

Herberger, chairman of the foundation board in 1982–83 and 1983–84, was an invaluable asset to the campaign. So were the other officers of that period: Vice Chairs Dino DeConcini, Sam Mardian Jr., and Libby Williams; Treasurer Peabody; and Secretary Gammage.

Other members of the board earned the undying gratitude of the university.

“Choose a busy person as the head of your enterprise” is an axiom that is as true today as in decades past.

Nelson and Ostrom followed that advice and chose Bob Bulla, CEO of Arizona Blue Cross and Blue Shield, as general chairperson of the Campaign for ASU. A community servant of great energy and outstanding leadership ability, Bulla worked untiringly to put the campaign over the top.

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“It was a privilege to have been asked to serve as chairman of ASU’s first major fund campaign,” he said later, recalling, “It was an exhilarating experience, because we proved we could do more than we thought we could. We set our goals high, and exceeded them.

“I was proud of all those who gave so much time and effort, and especially the ASU development staff for really pioneering and coming through. It established the base for subsequent fundraising efforts.”

It was a mammoth enterprise involving many hundreds of ASU supporters. Informing, inspiring and coordinating the efforts of all those busy people taxed the time and abilities of leaders, on and off the campus.

“I worked days and evenings, seven days a week, on the campaign,” said Ostrom, “and I didn’t take a vacation during the whole time. Kay Gammage and other development office people gave yeoman service. Bulla and his leaders, Don Dotts and his alumni association people, President Nelson, Roland Haden and his fellow deans and so many others devoted untold thousands of hours to making it a success. Peabody and his ASU Foundation board members were of vital help throughout those years.”

Chapter Ten - Did You Say $75 Million?

The Campaign for ASU was not the only concern of the ASU Foundation during those years. New board members elected in early 1985 were Pam Del Duca, Robert Duckworth, Robert Fletcher and Morrison Warren. Officers elected or re-elected that spring were Peabody as chairman; DeConcini, Williams and Mardian Jr. as vice chairs; Gammage, secretary; and Len Huck, treasurer.

It was onward and upward on a dozen fronts.

The Campaign for ASU gathered steam and moved so rapidly toward its goal of $75 million that Nelson and Ostrom reported to the ASU Foundation board on Sept. 30, 1986, that the goal had been raised to $100 million. Such an impossible goal would have been scoffed at only two years earlier, but now it was a reality.

In April 1986 the board added Joe Acosta, Junius Bowman, Robert Burns, Ron Erhardt, Bill Shover and Robert Swanson. The officers were re-elected. Elected to the board in 1987 were Robert Bluemle, Frank Labriola, F. Kenneth Skinner, and J. R. Nelson. Again the officers were retained for another year.

When the fundraising totals were added up in 1988, there was cause for celebration: the Campaign for ASU had brought in $114 million.

Vital as the new money was for enhancing academic excellence, there were other benefits that proved to be equally important.

Death took several of the foundation’s long-serving members, including John Mills, Paul Singer, Cowden, Craig and Riggins.

Ostrom noted four of them:

Treasurer Huck reported in 1986 that foundation assets had grown to $15.3 million. By the end of 1987, that total had reached $17.5 million.

The foundation agreed to make an annual Graduate Teaching Award in 1986.

Coach John Cooper led the ASU Sun Devil football team to victory over Michigan in the 1987 Rose Bowl, and $825,000 of the university’s share of the bowl payout was deposited with the ASU Foundation.

The National Endowment for the Arts was persuaded to grant $100,000 for a competition to develop a design for the new fine arts complex; the Kresge Foundation made a challenge grant of $300,000.

1. The Campaign for ASU forced the institution to examine its priorities, decide exactly what kind of university it wanted to be and look ahead to where it was going.

2. It strengthened the development office staff and showed the need for a larger budget.

3. It invigorated and strengthened the ASU Foundation, got its board members involved in active fundraising and welded foundation members closer to the university.

4. It demonstrated to everyone, on and off the campus, that Arizona State University had taken its place among the nation’s major institutions of higher learning and was worthy of greatly increased private support.

The Campaign for ASU in 1985–88 was a landmark effort in the history of the university.

The ASU Foundation’s leadership role in that epic endeavor will long stand as one of its most important achievements.

By the early 1980s ASU began incorporating personal computers into university curricula.

For his efforts, Ostrom was honored by the Phoenix Chapter of the National Society of Fundraising Executives with its Outstanding Fundraising Executive Award. He accepted the award on behalf of the foundation staff, its board members, Nelson and the university deans and directors who made the campaign successful.

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chapter eleven

the strategic plan for the 1990s Just two weeks after the close of the successful Campaign for ASU, Lonnie Ostrom and his staff started planning for an even more ambitious fundraising effort. The first campaign had raised an astounding $114 million and had proved that Arizona State University had the heart, the expertise and the community support to attract major gifts.

A short time later, Russell Nelson announced his intention to resign after a decade as ASU president. An Arizona Board of Regents search committee chose as Nelson’s successor Lattie Coor, president of the University of Vermont. Coor, an Arizona native, son of a prominent Arizona educator and a graduate of Northern Arizona University, had deep roots in the Grand Canyon State and welcomed the opportunity to return. His selection was announced in midsummer 1989, but prior commitments prevented his taking office at ASU until January 1990.

Lattie F. Coor Hall was officially dedicated and opened on Jan. 7, 2004. The building provides space for classrooms, open computer labs, research, survey research, special purpose facilities and offices.

Coor had a brilliant record as a fundraiser in Vermont, and the development office staff rejoiced at his selection. They believed he would enthusiastically support development activity at ASU and might even launch another capital campaign early in his presidency.

They were not disappointed.

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Chapter Eleven - The Strategic Plan for the 1990s

In his inaugural address, Coor declared: “Arizona State University is now ready to take that great step, one that I believe will mark the beginning of a new era. We are ready to move ASU forward as a world-class university functioning in a multi-campus setting.”

The new president had visions of greatness and made it clear to university and community leaders that an effort of unprecedented proportions was necessary to hasten its rise. One key element of that effort was fundraising.

Months before Coor’s inauguration, Ostrom and his staff prepared board members of the ASU Foundation for a radical change in their roles to meet the demands of the proposed capital campaign. The Campaign for ASU had awakened members to their leadership role in fundraising, but many lacked commitment to the change.

In this new, greatly expanded capital campaign effort, it would have to be the ASU Foundation accepting leadership, with the development office working closely in support.

To help board members accept their demanding new role, Ostrom urged them to draw up a strategic plan for the 1990s. It would call for time, effort and commitment well beyond what had been asked of the foundation in previous years. With Dean Haden’s consent, Ostrom brought Pat Burkhart into the central development office full-time to work with a new strategic planning committee. Committee members were to research and write the document outlining the new goals. Burkhart was elected a vice president of the foundation and worked hand-in-hand with board members during the next several years.

Kay Gammage and Tere Mendoza were also elected vice presidents in April 1990, signaling an ever-closer tie between the foundation and the development office.

Teaching and learning at ASU have become much more collaborative than in past decades.

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Students participate in the annual Lantern Walk which kicks off Homecoming Week.

“I first met with the ASU Foundation board in early 1989 at the Phoenix Country Club,” Burkhart said. “I found it to be a warm, friendly circle of community leaders, many of whom had been brought to the board by Kay Gammage. Some members had been associated with the foundation from its beginnings. They were, and always had been, supportive of the university, but they were about to be challenged to remake the foundation and take on burdens of leadership in fundraising they had never borne before.”

Perhaps without realizing it, board members had wanted to do something significant. During the ensuing months, they found that certain “something” in the proposed Campaign for Leadership, as the new capital campaign was to be called. Their motivation came from several sources: the arrival of a dynamic, development-oriented university president; the recent success of the first capital campaign; the not-always-subtle urgings of Ostrom and the ASU development staff; and the leadership of Sollenberger, the new board chairman, who devoted himself whole-heartedly to making the Campaign for Leadership go over the top.

Sollenberger named attorney Bob Bluemle as chair of the new strategic planning committee in October1990. This was another fortuitous choice, as Bluemle proved quite capable during the many months of research and preparation.

At the December 1990 meeting of the board, Bluemle declared that the ASU Foundation would be the first university foundation in the nation to develop such a far-reaching strategic plan. To do so, he added, his committee would interview scores of university officials and community leaders for their input.

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Chapter Eleven - The Strategic Plan for the 1990s

Burkhart, who for more than a year devoted much of his time to the strategic planning committee, outlined his views on the its mission in a Dec. 14, 1990, memo.

His comments were organized under three headings: Purposes, Methods and Process, and Outcomes.

“We envision three purposes in undertaking the creation of a strategic plan for the ASU Foundation,” he wrote. “(1) To position the foundation to play a leadership role in advancing the university in the 1990s. (2) To focus the energies and talents of the ASU Foundation board and staff on the achievement of common goals. (3) To assess the philanthropic opportunities for the university and the role of the ASU Foundation in realizing these opportunities.”

Computers allow ASU students to learn almost anytime, anywhere they choose.

Under the “Methods and Process” category, he wrote that the role of the committee should be to lend critical thinking and analytical skills to the work of the staff.

In that effort, every foundation board member should provide input. Planning, he felt, should include inquiry into the economy and the philanthropic situation, strengths and weaknesses of the foundation, specific goals and plans for action.

Finally, he noted, the strategic plan should produce the following results: total participation and support of the foundation board, a shared vision for the foundation to become a more vital player in the development of ASU and a clearer understanding of the board and staff as to what each could do to become more effective.

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Despite the surprising success of the first capital campaign, interviews with community leaders revealed that ASU’s reputation in 1990 lagged considerably behind the rising level of its academic excellence.

Respondents believed that the business community seemed more interested in ASU’s athletic program than they did its students; the University of Arizona still had a better reputation for seriousness and intensity; the historical perception of ASU was shallow; the large student body raised questions about quality; and ASU was viewed as the poor cousin of the U of A. Several believed that ASU didn’t properly inform the public about its growing stature.

The ASU Foundation fared little better. One community leader said bluntly, “The ASU Foundation board is viewed as elitist, that one has to buy one’s way onto the board.” Another commented, “The ASU alumni should be driving the ASU Foundation (but they are not).” Still another said, “The ASU Foundation has little visibility.”

Other leaders were more positive, citing the evident improvement of academics in recent years. “ASU has excellent graduate programs,” said a female executive who was an alumna. “ASU has now moved to establish academics as a focus of excellence,” declared a Valley mayor. New President Coor received enthusiastic accolades. “Coor is a breath of fresh air,” declared one business leader. “The change in ASU is perceptible and is personified by Lattie Coor,” said a well-known community figure.

The extensive interviewing of decision makers, university deans and faculty, and alumni — more than a hundred in all — provided the strategic planning committee with sometimes sobering but always helpful suggestions. They continued to plan for the 1990s.

At the December 1990 foundation board meeting, Ostrom distributed copies of the new ASU Directors’ Guidebook. Here was another step in transforming the ASU Foundation into a more aggressive, knowledgeable and focused force to support the university.

The book presented a brief history of the university and the ASU Foundation, a directory of ASU officials and development office staff, names and affiliations of board members, and other pertinent background information. It included the bylaws of the foundation, information about its finances, its working relationship with the ASU development office and brief descriptions of development terminology.

A section titled “Responsibilities of the Board” made it clear that board members were now expected to become more aware of ASU’s programs and goals, to be effective spokespersons for the university in the community, to attend board meetings, to participate in the management of foundation resources, and most important “to become directly involved in the development and fundraising efforts of the university.”

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Chapter Eleven - The Strategic Plan for the 1990s

Never before had the ASU Foundation board been given so much vital information about its role in supporting the university. And never before had it been so pointedly challenged to accept a leading role in ASU’s development.

As Ostrom and his staff had hoped, the board accepted that challenge with enthusiasm.

Chairman Bluemle and his strategic planning committee, after 10 months of research and planning, assembled board members and university leaders for a retreat at the ASU Memorial Union on Sept. 7, 1991, to finalize the strategic plan and prepare for the Campaign for Leadership. Twentyseven board members attended along with Coor and key ASU administrators.

The University Drive pedestrian overpass connects students from the north campus residence halls, athletic facilities and parking lots to the central campus area.

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Among the recommendations of the four task forces at the retreat: The foundation board should take a pride of ownership in the campaign through its leadership and participation; members should make a personal commitment of time, talent and money; Coor should commit 25 to 35 percent of his time to the campaign; and other key administrators should commit 10 to 30 percent.

The retreat was a wake-up call to all concerned that the ASU Foundation had made significant changes in its goals and had accepted important new responsibilities for bringing the university to new levels of excellence.

The 1992–93 Directors’ Guidebook, published shortly after the foundation’s strategic plan for the 1990s was completed, included a summary of that plan. Its introduction led with this statement: “The strategic plan reflects the consensus expressed by the board to move the foundation forward on several strategic fronts, including: (1) leadership in fundraising, (2) a more fully autonomous relationship with ASU, (3) enhanced board effectiveness and (4) strengthening relationships with other ASU support organizations.”

Foundation goals in 1992 were clearly stated: fundraising 1. Increase foundation endowment funds to a minimum of $75 million by the year 2000 2. Plan and implement a major fundraising campaign for ASU 3. Increase total giving to the foundation asset management 1. Maintain the purchasing power of endowment income and protect the real value of the endowment corpus 2. Maximize short-term and intermediateterm rates of return in accordance with investment policies approved by the board board development and effectiveness 1. Increase the board’s knowledge and familiarity with ASU, its programs and leadership 2. Increase each board member’s knowledge and understanding concerning the objectives and operations of the foundation 3. Increase board members’ participation in foundation activities and operations foundation autonomy • Create and maintain an appropriate long-term and cooperative relationship with Arizona State University foundation relationships with other support organizations • Assume a leadership role in coordinating the activities of all fundraising groups affiliated with ASU foundation visibility 1. Promote a close working relationship with university administrators and faculty 2. Assume a leadership role in communicating the mission, programs, activities and accomplishments of the university to the community

In March 1991 the core of the ASU West campus was completed on the western edge of Phoenix.

The document listed the foundation’s committee structure and outlined the mission for each: executive, campaign planning, finance, leadership and membership, real estate, program and ad hoc.

A final section on operational strategies outlined ways to make board meetings more meaningful and informative. It recommended moving meetings to campus, making sure each member received board material well in advance and, finally, encouraging attendance at meetings. Most important, it recommended that board members receive more information about ASU and that they have time to discuss it.

At the end, the document summarized foundation goals in these words: “In order to assist ASU in achieving worldclass status, the mission of the Arizona State University Foundation is to seek, solicit, manage and disburse the proceeds of gifts made on behalf of the university.”

That said it all.

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chapter twelve

new home, new image The growing importance of the ASU Foundation in Arizona State University’s ambitious plans was made clear in the early 1990s. The university had a new, dynamic and charismatic president in Coor, who had re-energized the university community with his vision of excellence — and the foundation’s role in achieving it.

Pride, tradition and spirit are woven deeply into the fabric of ASU’s history.

It was evident to the new president, as it was to the newly recruited professionals in the development office, that the university and the foundation needed a strong public relations effort. They needed to tell the world about the remarkable academic progress the university was making. ASU was recognized for its sports programs, they admitted, but not for its faculty, research achievements or the quality of its students. As for the ASU Foundation, it seemed to be relatively unknown, even on the university campus.

University administration and foundation leaders set out to correct those unfortunate perceptions, which were potential stumbling blocks in the way of a successful fundraising campaign.

Robert Duckworth, a First National Bank executive with strong credentials in Valley community leadership, took over the chairmanship of the foundation in 1992.

A night shot of the ASU Wells Fargo Arena with Sun Devil Stadium in the background

One of his early actions was to purchase the First Interstate Bank branch building at College Avenue and Seventh Street. The site would be a new home for the ASU Foundation.

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Chapter Twelve - New Home, New Image

The branch had long been a favorite of ASU students because of its location adjoining the university campus.

Margaret Kajikawa, wife of revered ASU coach Bill Kajikawa and everybody’s good friend, had been assistant vice president and manager of the office for years. Its building was regarded almost as part of the campus. Until that time, the foundation had no permanent home, and its board met more often in Phoenix than in university facilities. Ostrom and other foundation leaders became convinced that its offices should occupy their own clearly identifiable headquarters on or near campus.

A year before, the university had acquired another bank building adjoining campus, the former Valley National Bank branch at Apache Boulevard and Rural Road, for use as a visitor center. The building already housed an information center for campus visitors and offices of the ASU Alumni Association, ASU Institutional Advancement and the ASU Retirees Association. The First Interstate Bank building, even closer to the heart of university activity, seemed an ideal site for the ASU Foundation.

At its Oct. 6, 1992, meeting, the foundation board learned the purchase had been finalized, at a cost of $300,000. There was one other detail, considered by the board two months later: remodeling and equipping the building could cost another $329,000. The board accepted that expense and arranged for a sign proclaiming ASU FOUNDATION in large letters.

Foundation staff occupied the newly remodeled building in July 1993.

As planning for the new capital campaign progressed, it became evident that a major public relations effort was needed to educate the community and potential donors about ASU’s emergence as a world-class university.

At the same time, efforts were made to tell the ASU story to faculty, staff, students and the ASU Foundation board itself.

At each board meeting during the early 1990s, a university representative was invited to speak about academic progress on campus. A group of foundation advocates even performed a skit to demonstrate how board members could learn more about ASU’s progress and encourage potential donors to make more generous gifts to the university. The dramatic effort was received with enthusiasm and perhaps produced more results than a packet of printed materials.

When Coor spoke to the board, he hammered on the theme of “better, not bigger.” He hoped to reduce the size of the main campus enrollment and increase attendance at the new ASU West campus and the popular ASU

Downtown Center in Phoenix. Later the ASU East campus (known today as the Polytechnic campus), on the site of the former Williams Air Force Base east of Chandler, would begin attracting more students.

There were other public relations efforts, most of which produced good results. Tere Mendoza of the development office staff did much of the planning for those programs. At one board meeting, Chairman Bluemle reported on the success of the foundation’s joint venture with the Foothills Community Foundation of Carefree/ Cave Creek, aimed at strengthening relations between the foundation and the upscale foothills community. Well-known speakers were invited to address meetings in the homes of foothills residents, and they, in turn, were invited to campus for drama, music, dance and art events.

The “Sneaker Tours” program, named by Ann Bergin of the ASU staff, brought hundreds of visitors to the university for walking tours, during which visitors could see exciting educational and research activities.

A much more ambitious and costly public relations effort was launched in 1994. Coor asked the foundation board at its June meeting for $90,000 to help pay for the development of a new ASU institutional logo for use on campus signs, publications, stationery and elsewhere. A motion to approve the expenditure was defeated, 9–8, with several abstentions. After ASU officials came back to explain why a new logo was important and how it would be used to tell the ASU story, the board approved a $60,000 grant from unrestricted funds. They asked, though, that ASU hire an Arizona company. That vote was 12–7 in favor of the motion.

In December 1994, after carefully examining several proposals, the foundation board hired BJ Communications “to design a communications plan to create greater understanding among external and internal constituent groups to enable them to make decisions in the best interests of the university and the community.”

BJ Communications said the plan primarily

Students preparing for finals week

would be designed to aid the capital campaign.

It would, according to the company, use Coor’s inaugural address “vision statement” to promote the campaign and would use publications and graphics as major tools.

Three months later, in March 1995, the new logo was unveiled.

Perhaps a victim of its own success, the ASU Foundation came under scrutiny of Arizona’s statewide newspaper, The Arizona Republic, in May 1993. Reporter David Fritze wondered how the foundation, with its new affluence, was managing its resources, no doubt expecting to find some evidence of mismanagement. So he made a formal request, amounting to a demand, for access to all records of gifts and expenditures over the past two years.

Although such records were normally not revealed to protect the privacy of donors and recipients, the board decided that the request should be granted. Otherwise, it was reasoned, the foundation would be publicly accused of hiding information.

Fritze was invited to inspect the books, and spent many hours carefully scrutinizing them.

Months passed as all concerned awaited the publication of the reporter’s findings. But there was no story.

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Most ASU classrooms are equipped with the latest technology.

Minutes of the Oct. 21, 1993, board meeting contained the gleeful statement that “Mr. Fritze received the information he asked for, but has not been heard from since.”

At that same meeting, David Lincoln of the finance committee reported that the foundation’s asset base had increased from $42.5 million to $48.7 million during the previous two years. A year later that figure had risen to $57.3 million.

One of those gifts was $4 million given by the Del Webb Corporation to fund the Del E. Webb School of Construction.

ASU’s construction school was an important success story and produced graduates who were recruited by major corporations across the nation.

Other gifts, including nearly $1 million from the National Association of Purchasing Agents for the Harold E. Fearon Chair in Purchasing, were made to support faculty excellence. Fearon was the long-time chair of the management department and a nationally recognized authority in the area of purchasing.

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Because of the growing cost of processing and managing gifts, the foundation in June 1994 instituted a service charge of 2 percent on received donations, and 25 percent of interest earned. A 10 percent interest charge on endowment funds income was put in place, along with 12 percent of the endowment corpus.

It had become clear that receiving money cost money.

“When I first came on board,” recounted Ostrom, “I used to make up the deposits and take them to the bank myself. In my time, we introduced an experienced finance committee, a staff financial manager and professional investment managers to do the financial job.”

Devoted service is too seldom rewarded, so it was good news to foundation board members when it was announced in October 1995 that the Greater Arizona Chapter of the national Association of Fundraising Professionals had honored two of their own. Bill Shover was named Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year and Robert Duckworth received the Spirit of Philanthropy Award.

Chapter Twelve - New Home, New Image

There was more: Sharon Arnold, of the ASU development office staff, was named the Outstanding Fundraising Executive. Ostrom had more good news a few weeks later.

December 1995 was the best December for gifts in the foundation’s history, netting $3.5 million. He also announced that the Barry Goldwater Trust, which funded the Barry Goldwater Chair of American Institutions, would soon have $3 million in its coffers.

Charles Wagner, the development office finance director, had still more heartening news: The foundation’s assets had topped the $80 million mark for the first time. In February 1997, that total reached another landmark figure: $100 million. Only 15 years before, it had not yet reached $2 million. Professionals and volunteers alike had every reason to congratulate themselves.

While development officials understood that large gifts from corporations and wealthy individuals would be the key to success in the Campaign for Leadership, they did not forget donors of more limited means.

An ASU student practicing his trumpet outside the ASU School of Music. The music building houses the Evelyn Smith Music Theatre, music classrooms and practice rooms, the Rafael Mendez Library Museum, recital halls, the Music Research Facility, Katzin Concert Hall and the Organ Hall, home of the hand-carved, 1,800-pipe Fritts Organ.

Several clubs and societies already had made substantial contributions to development efforts.

Frank Sackton, a retired Army lieutenant general, former member of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff and later the founding dean of the ASU College of Public Programs, remembered the day when Ostrom consulted with him about establishing the President’s Club, members of which were to pledge $5,000 per year to the university.

“I thought that sounded like a fine idea,” Sackton said of the organization’s 1984 creation, “and I immediately joined.”

There were other charter members of the President’s Club: Bob Wilson of Buckeye, Nap and Barbara Lawrence of Tempe, Bob and Karen Hobbs of Paradise Valley and Bob and Carol Bulla of Scottsdale.

The Parents Association was formed and became another group of annual givers. The ASU admissions office teamed with the development office to serve that association.

Coor announced the national campaign co-chairs would be Ed Carson and his wife Nadine of Beverly Hills, Calif., and Dick and Alice (Dinky) Snell of Phoenix. Walter and Betsy Cronkite had agreed to be honorary national campaign co-chairs.

Ulrich, Carson and Snell were all hardworking ASU Foundation board members and loyal builders of the university. Many other future and past directors of the foundation would join them in the campaign.

It was clear that in this campaign effort, the ASU Foundation would be taking the lead.

Planning for the all-important ASU Campaign for Leadership occupied many foundation leaders and university officials in 1995. Don Ulrich succeeded Duckworth as chair of the foundation board and accepted responsibility for its campaign committee.

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chapter thirteen

new life for Old Main Old Main, the historic center of academic activity through the decades of the normal school and state teachers college eras, holds a special place in the hearts of Arizona State University alumni. It has long been a symbol of affection for their alma mater and an ever-present reminder of their collegiate days.

Almost 120 years after it was built, Old Main remains the centerpiece of the ASU Tempe campus.

Throughout America, and for several centuries, such sentimental symbols have moved former students to give generous support to their colleges.

Arizona State University’s Old Main has a colorful history — a past known to relatively few graduates and friends of the institution.

Until this landmark was built before the turn of the 20th century, the Territorial Normal School was housed entirely in a four-room building erected in 1886. Clearly, a more suitable building was needed. A generous legislature, after some acrimonious debate, voted to grant some $6,500 to build the foundation and first-story walls. The rest of the cost would have to come primarily from yearly tax levies.

Construction of the spacious three-story sandstone and brick building began in 1894. As the first-story walls went up, the first problem reared its head. A contractor whose bid had been turned down because of his shady financial history sued the normal school board to obtain the contract for further work. So the walls stood in lonely splendor for more than a year before the low bidder finally won his case and resumed the construction.

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Disaster soon struck again when that contractor proved unscrupulous, vanished and was never found. The school board was faced with the necessity of finding money to complete the project. It came, little by little, but there was a further delay when the cement sub-contractor’s inferior materials had to be torn out and replaced.

Soon, it was discovered that the windmill pump would not hoist water up as far as the third floor, so a gasoline-driven electric generator, one of the first ever installed in Arizona, had to be purchased.

Finally, at long last, the building was completed in 1898, just 10 days before the battleship Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, igniting the SpanishAmerican War. Four years in the making, the stately Victorian structure was worth waiting for. Governor Myron McCord delivered a dedicatory oration and normal school President James McNaughton made a scholarly address. Fred Irish’s cadet corps marched, the 158 students enrolled at that time applauded and townspeople marveled over the indoor plumbing and the first electrical wiring in Tempe.

Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt speaking to students of Tempe Normal School from the steps of Old Main after the dedication of the Roosevelt Dam in 1911

The tallest building in the Salt River Valley, and certainly the grandest educational edifice in the territory, was a source of pride for alumni and friends alike. Amazingly, considering the luxurious appointments and the expensive delays in construction, Old Main had been built at a cost of only $44,071.

Old Main was the centerpiece of the university’s “Old Quad,” which included the science building (today’s University Club) and the auditorium-gymnasium (since replaced by the language and literature building). On March 20, 1911, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt spoke from the Old Main steps to an assembled throng and predicted that because of the new dam named in his honor, the Salt River Valley might one day have a population of 75,000–100,000.

Virtually every student for a half century attended classes in Old Main, but by 1952 the old girl was aging. Extensive repairs were needed, especially to the outside stairs and balconies, and money was tight. President Gammage decided on a quick fix that brought down the stairways and replaced them with a modern facade that marred the 19th-century charm of the building and brought tears to the eyes of many who had loved it as it had been.

But the deed was done.

Among the mourners was Grady Gammage Jr., a baby at the time of the renovation, but who later came to see his father’s decision as unfortunate.

“I decided to do my part to atone for my father’s mistake,” he once declared. So he accepted the co-chairmanship of the fund drive to restore Old Main to its original glory. Other co-chairs named were John Bebbling, a 1971 ASU graduate; Darrell Sawyer, ’57; and Robert Mitchell, ’84.

Don Dotts, who for many years headed the ASU Alumni Association before joining the development office staff, accepted the responsibility of directing the fund campaign.

“I had been listening to Don Dedera (noted author and ASU graduate of 1951) complain about how Old Main had been ruined,” Dotts recalled. “So I took him to President Nelson’s office one day and we made our case for the restoration. We said we thought the project could be completed for a million dollars, which proved to be a gross underestimate. Nothing was done right away, but the idea had been planted.

“It was not until 1993 that things started moving. President Coor wanted Old Main restored, and the alumni office badly needed a new home. What better solution, we reasoned, than doing the restoration and locating the alumni office there? The president agreed, and we went from there.”

The project soon became much bigger than a simple facelift. The load-bearing walls, sturdy as ever, were kept, but much of the rest of the structure had to be replaced. The original goal of $3.5 million was increased to $5.7 million as the plans became more elaborate. Among the added amenities were a grand ballroom, balcony, boardroom, conference rooms, library and alumni association staff offices.

The Tempe Normal School is forever etched in hearts, minds and stone thanks to a restoration in the 1990s.

Once again, ASU Foundation board members joined in the campaign. Ed and Nadine Carson, co-chairs of the ASU Campaign for Leadership, made the inaugural gift of $500,000 for Old Main restoration. Grady Gammage Jr. funded a conference room. Pit Lucking, Keith Turley and other ASU Foundation supporters were contributors.

Noted alumni who were active leaders in the Old Main campaign included U.S. congressmen from Arizona Ed Pastor, ‘66, ‘74 JD, and Bob Stump, ‘51; former state treasurer Doug Todd, ‘51; football great Wilford (Whizzer) White, ‘51; and Coach Bill Kajikawa, ‘37. Hundreds of other alumni joined them in the effort.

The Old Main campaign provided an important boost to alumni giving to the university, a segment of the overall support picture that some foundation leaders had felt was missing.

Among alumni and/or their spouses making major gifts to ASU during this time were Eddie Basha, Ed Rondthaler, Wayne Doran, Gary Tooker, Wilbur Power, Carson and John Bebbling.

In 2000 the $10 million gift to the ASU Honors College from Craig and Barbara Barrett was of special significance.

For decades, lagging support from ASU alumni was criticized by non-alumni supporters. The traditional response was that ASU alumni were school teachers or middle-class workers of other sorts, but this was changing. Many ASU graduates were earning wealth and turning their attention to supporting the university more generously than ever before.

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chapter fourteen

a defining moment

The Design School in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts houses degree programs in architecture, environmental science, housing and community development, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, urban design and visual communication design.

President Coor’s vision of Arizona State University as an institution of higher learning ready to take its place among the great state universities of America became the keynote of the ASU Campaign for Leadership. This was indeed a “defining moment,” one destined to move ASU a giant step closer to the fulfillment of his dream. From its inception in the mid-1990s and into the next millennium, the campaign used “A Defining Moment” as its catchphrase.

Coor cited a number of other defining moments in ASU’s long march toward greatness, starting with the Arizona electorate’s decision to grant the university its present name in 1958. Among them:

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1960 — A grant from the Walker McCune Foundation and a loan from the ASU Foundation provided the resources to buy a used transmitter and studio equipment to establish KAET-TV.

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1964 — Gammage Auditorium opened, bringing many of the world’s finest orchestras and theater and dance companies to Arizona for the first time.

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1966 — Dean James Elmore of the College of Architecture, along with a group of his students, prepared a visionary plan to reclaim the Salt River channel as an urban park. That dream was realized with the opening of the Rio Salado Project’s Tempe Town Lake in 1999.

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1969 — Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Fales, the ASU Foundation and the National Science Foundation purchased the Nininger Meteorite Collection, one of the world’s largest.

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1970 — Robert W. Galvin endowed the Paul V. Galvin Memorial Chair in Solid State Science. The gift provided the resources to recruit John M. Cowley, whose appointment attracted other notable faculty and helped establish the National Center for Electron Microscopy.

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1978 — ASU became a member of the prestigious Pacific-10 Conference, capping a decade of athletic success.

This association with the West’s finest universities would enhance ASU’s reputation in many fields.

1981 — A gift from Marvin and June Morrison established the Morrison Institute for Public Policy. The institute was designed to bridge the gap between scholarship and public decision making.

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1984 — Walter Cronkite gave his name to ASU’s Journalism and Telecommunications Department. Today the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is a perennial winner in the Hearst Foundation’s journalism awards and one of the topranked journalism schools in the country.

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1988 — ASU established the University Honors College. Today, Barrett, The Honors College at ASU ranks among the country’s finest honors colleges.

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1991 — ASU at the West campus was dedicated, honoring a 20-year commitment to the West Valley.

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1994 — ASU received the prestigious designation as a research institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Of the 88 research institutions in the nation, ASU became one of only nine to achieve such status without a medical school or land grant status.

These defining moments were only a small representation of ASU’s academic progress during the years leading to and introducing the ASU Campaign for Leadership. Other such distinctions would come.

Soon, the ASU Campaign for Leadership would prove to be one of the most important defining moments in the long history of Arizona State University.

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is annually ranked as one of the top journalism programs in the world.

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Buoyed by the success of the earlier campaign, ASU’s leaders were determined in the early 1990s to launch a second effort — one that would rocket the university to a level of academic excellence beyond the fondest hopes of all those who had gone before. This time it would be a “people’s campaign,” powered primarily by those beyond the campus limits. And the ASU Foundation would take the leadership role in that herculean effort.

“In the first campaign,” recalled Tere Mendoza, “Lonnie Ostrom was the Lone Ranger, riding on ahead into uncharted territory without much preliminary planning or a great deal of help from the foundation or anyone else. But in the ASU Campaign for Leadership, he and his staff were determined to martial the resources of the university’s friends and to build the campaign on a more solid base.”

Recognizing the urgent need to enhance the public perception of ASU, President Coor and his lieutenants set out to take a giant step forward. In the ASU Campaign for Leadership academics and service would be the key emphases, with bricks and mortar all but forgotten.

To underscore that determination the slogan “Great Teachers, Great Students, Great Communities” was prominently featured in many of the campaign’s publications. The wisdom of those emphases would be demonstrated in the success of the ASU Campaign for Leadership.

Allen Rosenberg served Arizona State University in scores of ways over many decades, but none of his contributions was more important than his success in persuading busy Don Ulrich to serve on the board of the ASU Foundation.

“Allen brought me onto the board in 1974,” recounted Ulrich in 2000. “In 1989, after my return to Phoenix from several years in Atlanta, he and Lonnie Ostrom urged me to become active on the board again. I enjoyed serving the foundation.”

In 2012 the U.S. Department of Energy awarded ASU $15 million to lead an Algae Testbed Public-private Partnership (ATP3) at the Polytechnic campus for its Advancements in Sustainable Algal Production opportunity.

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Ulrich was devoted to the cause of education for most of his life. A graduate of Loras College in Iowa, he was a high school teacher before launching a highly successful career in business. He rose through the ranks of Coca-Cola Co. management to become senior vice president in charge of all bottlers in the U.S. in 1984. Later he left Coca-Cola to head the Ventura Coastal Corporation, citrus growers and processors; and RSI, a receivables management corporation for hospitals and doctors.

Recalling the landscape at the time, Ulrich remembered, “It didn’t take me long after my first arrival in Phoenix to become impressed by the great potential I saw in Arizona State University. This was one of the most rapidly growing areas in the nation, and the possibilities for ASU’s development were enormous.

leadership planning Don Ulrich was elected chairperson of the ASU Foundation in 1995 and also chaired the planning committee for the ASU Campaign for Leadership.

Joining him on the committee were: Barbara Barrett

Richard Bloechl

Ed Carson

Pam Grant

Don Isaacson

David Lincoln

Pit Lucking

Rusty Lyon

Florence Nelson

Robin Parke

Kim Ruggiero

Bill Shover

Mark Sklar

Dinky Snell

Gary Tooker

Craig Weatherup

Ellie Ziegler

This institution had the capability of becoming one of the great universities of our country, and I was determined to help that take place. Working with the ASU Foundation seemed the most appropriate way to make my participation count.”

Not only did Ulrich play an important leadership role at the foundation, he accepted Arizona Governor Fife Symington’s appointment to the Arizona Board of Regents, governing body for all three state universities.

Once the foundation accepted its charge to become the driving engine of the proposed ASU Campaign for Leadership, Ulrich was a natural choice to chair the campaign planning committee; in 1995 he was elected chairperson of the ASU Foundation board.

“Our committee worked very hard for two years,” Ulrich said. “We worked closely with President Coor and his senior administrators and deans, Lonnie Ostrom’s development office people, and community leaders in many fields. We did our best to determine what the most critical needs were and how to portray those needs to potential donors most effectively. We tried to understand how all segments of the university and its supporters could best function to assure that the campaign would be successful. We examined the public perception of ASU and what its strong and weak points were.”

To obtain an outside professional assessment of the campaign’s potential Ulrich’s committee contracted with a prominent Atlanta fundraising firm — one that had enjoyed considerable success in advising university campaign leaders.

“We asked them to do a feasibility study — I preferred to call it a ‘readiness study,’” Ostrom later said. “To guide us in our planning their representatives came to Arizona, met with ASU and community people, and devoted six months to preparing their report. When it was ready they presented it to the planning committee of the foundation. We were all very dissatisfied with the report, which dealt mostly in generalities and did not really answer our questions about the potential and any possible problems of the ASU campaign.

“Don (Ulrich) read through the first 20 pages in stony silence,” recalled Ostrom, “and then stopped reading. He asked the visitors to leave the room, and after a brief conference with committee members, called them back. ‘This report does not give us the information we asked you to provide,’ he told them. ‘Just send us your bill and consider our association at an end.’ These people had never had a major failure before, and could hardly believe they had just been fired. But fired they certainly were.”

Chafing at the loss of time, money and effort caused by this abortive exercise, Ostrom sought advice from development colleagues with whom he had worked in other Pac-10 Conference universities. He invited development vice presidents from the University of Southern California, UCLA and the University of Washington to the ASU campus to confer with President Coor and other senior administrators.

From that group he chose Roger Olson, longtime USC senior vice president for development, who had just retired from that university after 30 years of service. Olson had conducted many highly successful fundraising campaigns and was an ideal choice to assist ASU.

“So we told them to find those answers and redo their report. I went back to Atlanta and spent a day with them, reiterating what we wanted them to find out for us. They returned to Tempe three months later with an expanded report, but one that still did not address our problems.”

The firm’s representatives met with Ulrich and his committee, presented their report and awaited the response. It did not take long to convince the visitors that they had once again missed their target.

“We were very lucky to get Roger,” said Ostrom.

“He did a magnificent job for us. He was able to analyze our special strengths and weaknesses, and to assist the foundation and the development office in our planning. He made detailed recommendations for the campaign organization and how to conduct it and came up with a suggested campaign goal: $240 million to $260 million. That was considerably higher than the $200 million we had originally seen as the figure we could realistically hope for, but we accepted his more optimistic estimate.”

Olson’s goal was more than twice as much as the previous campaign had brought in. It was more than three times that campaign’s original goal. Ulrich, Ostrom and their colleagues looked ahead with understandable trepidation to the long and difficult task.

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time and treasure — the campaign executive committee President Lattie Coor’s ASU Campaign for Leadership executive committee unselfishly gave time and treasure amounting to more than $30 million during the 1990s.

Hand-picked members of the committee were: Barbara and Craig Barrett Herman Chanen Pam Grant and Dan Cracchiolo Jeanne and Gary Herberger Florence and Jerry Nelson Diane and Gary Tooker Connie and Craig Weatherup

They had just become reconciled to the enormity of the task when a new thunderbolt struck: President Coor informed them he was raising the campaign sights even higher. When the public announcement of the ASU Campaign for Leadership was made, he was going to set the goal at $300 million.

Everyone gulped in disbelief. As much as they appreciated the president’s optimism, some had serious doubts this lofty goal could be reached. Moreover, all concerned were painfully aware of the disastrous effects of failure. Better to surpass a lower goal, some reasoned, than to fall short and be labeled as losers. But Coor’s decision had been made, and it would not be changed.

It became obvious that new sources of corporate and private giving would need to be tapped, and that major gifts well beyond any previously received would be vital to success in this ambitious venture.

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Nadine Mathis and Eddie Basha Joan and Jerry Colangelo Jill and Tom Evans Sally and Richard Lehman Cookie and Mark Sklar Sharon and Don Ulrich Daryl and Louis Weil

of this expanded magnitude would be more expensive than any earlier effort.

Professional fundraising advice, a host of hard-hitting publications, direct mailings, staff compensation, office expense, travel — all these necessities and many more would have to be paid for.

A widely accepted standard in campaign financing was that of investing 14 to 16 cents to bring in each dollar. Using that standard as a guide ASU would need a campaign budget of $45 million to reach the target of $300 million. But where would that kind of money come from?

The university administration made it clear that most of it would have to come from sources outside ASU. “I felt frustrated for some time about the lack of university funding for this effort,” Ostrom admitted later. “But eventually I was able to see that it might have been a blessing in disguise because it forced the foundation to shoulder more of the burden than ever before. Foundation

Chapter Fourteen - A Defining Moment

board members gave generously, and we kept campaign expenses well below the expected figure.

Our total campaign costs would not exceed $4 million, and that was an amazing achievement.”

Ulrich did a superb job of convincing ASU Foundation board members to give generously of their financial resources and their time.

“I made my own contribution,” he remembered. “And then I told each member of the board that I expected them to make theirs. They stepped up to the plate and got the job done in a big way. Then they went out and convinced others to do the same.”

Long before President Coor announced the launching of the campaign, major gifts were coming in. And each of the early gifts attracted others. During the two years of preparation for the campaign about a third of the $300 million goal was reached.

Lattie F. Coor was ASU’s 15th president, serving from 1990 to 2002.

Much of the early success of the ASU Campaign for Leadership was directly attributable to the efforts of President Coor. Not only had he been more deeply involved in previous developmental efforts — particularly at the University of Vermont — than any earlier ASU president, but he projected himself into the new campaign with total devotion.

So completely had he won over leaders of the Phoenix area and beyond during the first five years of his presidency that they responded with unprecedented enthusiasm to his call for their support.

“A campaign of this magnitude needed a charismatic leader, not a manager,” Ostrom said. “Lattie Coor had a vision of a greater Arizona State University, and he was able to transmit that vision into the hearts and minds of others. Moreover, he realized that the most important gifts are made possible only when the president himself goes and asks for them.

“He worked tirelessly during the campaign, and he never asked anyone to do something he wouldn’t do. The campaign will live for many decades as his legacy, and he will be remembered as one of ASU’s truly great presidents.”

The Nursing and Innovation Building II opened on ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus in August 2009. Its copper cladding is a nod to Arizona’s mining history.

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There is no more impressive example of his efforts than the financial and talent contributions made by his hand-picked campaign executive committee, whose members gave more than $30 million and devoted untold thousands of hours to the campaign.

At the top of the list of campaign leaders were the national campaign co-chairs: Ed and Nadine Carson and Dick and Dinky Snell. Walter and Betsy Cronkite served as the honorary national campaign chairs.

A significant feature of the executive committee makeup was the number of ASU Foundation leaders who served. It was another indication that the campaign was being driven in an unprecedented way by the energy of the foundation members.

The foundation’s campaign planning committee had many decisions to make and many problems with which to wrestle during its two years of service.

What would be the campaign’s major thrusts? How best to identify and approach major donors? Which of the many deserving university programs should receive major portions of the proceeds? Which of those programs were most likely to win the support of potential givers? When should professional counsel be followed, and when should local situations dictate a departure from that advice? What about organization?

Campaign funding? Publications and other educational tools? Gift acknowledgment and record keeping?

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Taylor Place in downtown Phoenix epitomizes sustainable, technologically advanced urban student housing.

“Roger Olson was a big help,” Ulrich noted.

“The Atlanta firm gave us little except boilerplate generalities, but he worked closely with us, showed us how to proceed and supplied the nuts and bolts of campaign management.

“We had some public relations problems to overcome. We found that a number of people were unhappy with the ASU athletic program, its director and the irresponsible activities of some athletes. Others had little concept about how much academic progress had been made at ASU in recent years or how important research had become in most of the colleges.

And of course there was the old problem that many people had with giving to a university they assumed was primarily supported with tax money.

It was decided there would be three principal components of the ASU message. In a hundred ways, and with an untold number of repetitions, the message was made crystal clear: The money raised by the campaign would be devoted to “great teachers, great students, great communities.” Creation of endowed professorial chairs was a primary necessity.

Scholarship funding and the recruitment of the best students was another. Research and service to the many communities touched by the university also was a consideration.

Working closely with the ASU development office and university administration, the foundation’s campaign planning committee did its work carefully and well. “For two years the ASU Campaign for Leadership was probably the worst-kept secret in town,” Lonnie Ostrom said later with a chuckle.

“We talked with hundreds of people during the planning period, so of course everybody knew about it long before President Coor made the formal announcement that the campaign was being launched.”

Still, it was appropriate that the announcement be made, and made in style.

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It was a memorable event. On the evening of Oct. 23, 1997, ASU administrators, faculty, students, ASU Foundation board members, campaign officers and community leaders gathered in the University Activity Center. They were guests for a reception, dinner, welcoming remarks

by President Coor, a processional of students representing ASU’s major academic units and a dramatic presentation directed by Michael Barnard and written by Bob Sorenson.

A four-color program announced the launching of the campaign in this message from national campaign co-chairs Ed and Nadine Carson and Dick and Dinky Snell: “On behalf of the National Campaign Cabinet, we wish to welcome you to a defining moment in the history of Arizona State University, the Valley of the Sun and the State of Arizona. Today ASU is launching the largest fundraising campaign this state has ever seen.

“The ASU Campaign for Leadership is part of a strategic blueprint for making Arizona State University the model metropolitan research university for the next century. The campaign is not about bricks and mortar. Rather, it is about investing in human talent and the acquisition, advancement and transfer of knowledge.

“As members of the Greater Phoenix community we take great pride in our association with ASU and its vision for the future. Our hope is that you will feel compelled to join us in this partnership. The investments we make in the university now will pay dividends for generations to come.

We believe there is nothing more important that we could be doing over the next few years than helping ASU become a leadership institution for Arizona and the nation.”

President Coor’s message that evening stressed the importance of the campaign and outlined its principal goals: “This is a historic moment for ASU. In just a few short years, we have become one of the nation’s leading metropolitan research universities, having developed further and faster than any other university in the country.

We can all be immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished. But we do not have the financial footing we need to be the truly distinguished university for the next century.

“A strong endowed base of support is essential to the great universities of the future, both public and private, if we are to attract and retain the very best faculty and students and build and sustain the very best programs.

“This campaign will enable us to build and strengthen three important areas: great teachers, great students and great communities. We seek to raise and invest $75 million in endowed chairs and professorships, enabling us to recruit and retain the very best faculty members attainable.

Pitchforks are up for three students at ASU’s Tempe campus.

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“As well, we seek to raise $75 million for students so that we may more fully provide scholarships, fellowships and program support for a much broader array of able students. And we wish to invest $150 million in programs that will enable us to function at the cutting edge of research and discovery, providing us ways, more effectively than ever, to bind ourselves to this community.

“The ASU Campaign for Leadership is truly our defining moment for the future, a community partnership that will launch us into the next century and set our course for generations to come. I invite each of you — every member of the ASU family and every individual, corporation and foundation — who believes in what we stand for to join us in this historic undertaking.

“Together, we can accomplish something truly magnificent.”

Civic Space Park, 424 North Central Avenue, Phoenix, connects ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus with the business corridor, transportation hub and the residential communities, accommodating a variety of uses, events and daily functions of the university.

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chapter fifteen

a great lady passes

Grady Jr. and Kay Gammage with a bust of patriarch Grady Gammage

Kay Gammage loved to tell the story about the day not many months after her 1949 arrival on the ASU campus as President Grady Gammage’s new bride that students massed for a pep rally in front of Old Main. Gammage was scheduled to address the throng.

“I was doing some housecleaning in the president’s home near Old Main,” she recalled, “when I heard the clamor outside and decided to go out, get lost in the crowd and hear what Grady had to say. I had hardly arrived, however, when I heard Ed Carson, who was then the student body president, say over the loudspeaker, ‘I see that Mrs. Gammage has joined us. Let’s give her a big hand and have her come up and say a few words.’ There was no way out. I went up to the microphone, hoping I didn’t look too dowdy, and said my few words.”

It was the first of hundreds of speeches she was destined to make during the next 46 years of her tireless service to Arizona State University.

The Gammages: Kay, Grady and Grady Jr.

Who could have predicted on that long-ago day that Kay Gammage would become one of the founders of the ASU Foundation; that Carson and his wife Nadine would be co-chairs of the university’s most ambitious fund campaign; and that both the Carsons and Kay Gammage would win the everlasting gratitude of the ASU family for their many decades of dedicated service to the university and its foundation?

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Chapter Fifteen - A Great Lady Passes

Kay Gammage was still living on the evening of Oct. 23, 1997, but her failing health would not permit her to be among the distinguished assemblage of 700 who gathered at the University Activity Center for the gala launch of the ASU Campaign for Leadership.

Two months later, on Christmas Day, she died.

The ASU Foundation and the ASU development office had retained her as a vice president of the foundation long after she became unable to take an active part in serving the university she loved so well.

Old-timers remembered when she was the heart and soul of the foundation, and newcomers to the board quickly learned to honor her as a living legend.

It was Kay Gammage who drove to every corner of the state in 1958 to exhort voters to cast their ballots in favor of Proposition 200, the initiative that gave the university its present name, winning in the November election by a margin of 2–1. It was Kay Gammage to whom ASU President G. Homer Durham turned after Grady Gammage’s death to serve as an unofficial development director of the university. It was Kay Gammage who helped to energize the agriculture council, for many years the major support group for ASU advancement.

It was Kay Gammage who launched “friends” groups to fund a half-dozen academic endeavors on the campus. And it was Kay Gammage who nourished the fledgling ASU Foundation in its early years and recruited many of its key leaders. She became the embodiment of the ASU spirit and was beloved by students, faculty and friends of the university.

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student at Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio. She earned a master’s degree in college personnel management at Syracuse University and served briefly on the staff at Kent State before moving to Arizona State Teachers College at Flagstaff in 1941 as assistant dean of women. A year later she was in Grady Gammage’s office, applying for the vacant position as dean of women at Arizona State Teachers College in Tempe.

Gammage was impressed by her vivacity and self-confidence, but he did not hire her. “For two reasons,” he later explained.

“She was too young, and besides I did not want to be accused of pirating good people from our sister college at Flagstaff.”

The two did not meet again for seven years, after the death of Gammage’s wife, Dixie, but Grady remembered their 1942 meeting. He was attending a conference in Chicago and decided to call Kathryn at nearby Lake Forest College, where she was dean of women. She agreed to join him for dinner and the next morning, she recalled, “my office was bedecked with roses!” Their romance blossomed, and on Nov. 19, 1949, they were married in the Lake Forest College chapel.

During their 10 years together before Grady Gammage’s death in December 1959, Kay served as a highly effective Arizona State University ambassador of good will. Not only did she serve as hostess for countless social events on the campus, but she developed close friendships with a host of community leaders in the Greater Phoenix area. She was able to bring scores of them into the college family and win their support for the institution’s academic development.

She was an invaluable aide to ASU’s first professional development director, Carl Miller, and later to his successor, Lonnie Ostrom.

“I could not have been very successful, especially in my first year or two as development director, without Kay’s help,” Ostrom later acknowledged.

“She seemed to know everybody who was anybody, and all doors were open to her. We called on many community leaders together, and we attended meetings and dinners almost every night while I was getting acquainted. She had unlimited energy and did everything in her power to make me succeed.

Her love of this university was total, and it soon rubbed off on me.”

Kay’s death led many of her associates to reminisce about earlier days when Arizona State College was struggling to find its place in the sun.

Gone now were most of the stalwarts who launched the agriculture council and later the Arizona State College Foundation. Charlie Wetzler, first president of the foundation; Wes Knorpp; Orval Knox; John B. Mills; Sid Moeur; E.J. Demson; Ray Cowden; and so many others, all gone. Kay had brought some of those early leaders onto the foundation board, and most of the others credited her with keeping them working and planning and dreaming of a greater ASU. In later years she was instrumental in persuading many community leaders to serve on the ASU Foundation board. Her good friend Kax Herberger was one whose long service to the university helped bring it to national prominence. John Pritzlaff was another, as were Libby Williams, Mae Sue Talley, Barbara Long and many more.

Pat Burkhart, who found Kay to be a tower of strength when he first joined the staff of the ASU development office, said of her, “For many of the long-standing members of the ASU Foundation, Kay Gammage personified both ASU and the foundation. She would walk into a foundation board meeting with her trademark ‘hello-o’ and immediately commanded the scene. It was remarkable to watch.

“Kay looked after our young development staff like a wise housemother. Once I found myself crosswise with a number of people on campus over a matter of principle. I asked Kay if I could talk with her confidentially. Naturally, I was invited to her home for tea. We looked at pictures and she reminisced

Kay Gammage and Lonnie Ostrom

about her life at ASU. Finally, she asked me what my trouble was. I explained the dilemma. She listened politely and intensely. She asked me, ‘Well, did you do the right thing?’ I said I had. Then she laughed and said, ‘Now don’t worry about a thing.

I’m sure everything will work out just fine.’

“We went back to the tea and cookies, and later everything did work out fine. The morale boost she gave me that day helped me stick to my guns and make a stand on principle.”

Kay could be strong and unyielding when the occasion called for it, but she much preferred the tea-and-cookies approach to problems. She convinced people that she cared for them, which was easy for her because she really did. Her rare talent for getting others to join her team was universally admired.

“You just didn’t say ‘no’ to Kay when she asked you to do something,” was a familiar refrain from foundation members who knew her.

Kay Gammage’s long association with Arizona State University spanned the years between $100 gifts and a $400 million campaign. She was a midwife at the birth of the ASU Foundation and devoted her life to making it grow, prosper and serve humanity. It would be difficult to find a program of the foundation that does not bear her mark today.

There was and is no one like her.

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“The most exciting aspect of working at Arizona State University during the campaign was not just what we were, but what we were becoming.

We were determined to be right there among the best in the major leagues.”

— Milton Glick, former ASU senior vice president and provost

the best triple-a team in America ASU’s former senior vice president and provost, Milton Glick, often laced his colorful descriptions of the university’s academic progress with sports metaphors.

“You have to go out and seek top-flight students with the same enthusiasm and intensity that a football coach employs in going after a prize tight end,” he declared during the Campaign for Leadership.

“That means offering the best possible educational opportunities and environment, and it means having an adequate financial package to offer that student. You need money beyond what the state provides to do that, and that’s one of the reasons we worked so hard to get private financial support through the ASU Campaign for Leadership.

“The same is true of attracting top-flight faculty,” Glick said. “I call a nationally respected professor a ‘franchise player,’ a star who gives a department or college national prominence and attracts other faculty stars who want to serve with him or her.

“The most exciting aspect of working at Arizona State University during the campaign was not just what we were, but what we were becoming. We progressed, we came a long way in a short period of time, but we still had work to do. I sometimes would call ASU ‘the best Triple-A team in America,’ but that was not good enough. We were determined to be right there among the best in the major leagues.”

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Great teachers? ASU’s Campaign for Leadership produced remarkable results.

A decade earlier the university had only a half-dozen endowed chairs. By the early months of 2000 there were 70 such academic chairs and professorships, each with the potential of attracting top-flight professors from across America and around the world.

Great students? One of the most exciting stories in higher education was (and continues to be) that of ASU’s remarkable success in attracting National Merit Scholars. ASU’s count surpassed 100 during the campaign — nearly twice the number of such talented students attending the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University, combined — many of whom came because of outstanding professors and fellow students.

Great communities? ASU research in scores of academic areas was making news around the globe, and much of the

Commencement at Wells Fargo Arena

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exploration was aimed at improving the quality of life in Arizona. A beautifully written and illustrated journal was devoted to ASU research activity and crammed with stories about the university’s success in solving problems on earth, in the seas and in space.

Additionally, the “communities” element received a boost with the creation in 1994 of the President’s Community Enrichment Programs (PCEP), launched by Lattie Coor’s wife Elva shortly after they were married.

The program drew substantial numbers of prospects into the leadership campaign, many of whom became significant donors as they became more familiar with the work being done at ASU. It quickly became a powerful expression of the “great communities” part of the campaign, bringing hundreds of people in direct contact with the university for the first time. While campus “sneaker tours” were a valuable part of the initiative, PCEP resulted in dozens of events, hosted by leading Phoenicians in their homes, during which some of the university’s most compelling

faculty members discussed the important work they were doing, often joined by their students in the research. A number of the 90 endowed chairs created during the campaign had their origins in the President’s Community Enrichment Programs.

PCEP was further accelerated in 2002 when Sybil Francis, wife of incoming ASU President Michael M. Crow, took the reins while also overseeing other foundation engagement programs. In 2012 the program name was changed to Presidential Engagement Programs to better reflect its successful community outreach focus.

“For the first time the Greater Phoenix community had come to recognize the excellence of ASU and its importance to the future growth and development of this area,” Glick said. “Local graduates of Stanford and other great universities across the land joined hands with ASU alumni to give the university the support it must have to join the academic elite. That, to me, was the most important benefit we gained from the ASU Campaign for Leadership.”

For more than two years before President Coor made his public announcement of the campaign in 1997, the ASU Foundation, the university’s senior administrators and the development staff had been working diligently to obtain the initial commitments so necessary for success in a major campaign. Nobody worked harder, or with more encouraging results, than Don Ulrich’s ASU Foundation campaign planning committee.

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“In cooperation with the university people, we developed a potential donor list and started calling on them,” noted Ulrich. “We had hoped for gifts of $10 million to $25 million from several major corporations and individuals, but those never came through. On the other hand, many others gave more than we had expected. By the time the campaign was announced, we had about a third of the total goal committed.”

Members of the ASU Foundation board gave more generously than ever before.

So did many ASU administrators. One of the substantial early gifts came from Coor himself, and the president’s personal commitment convinced scores of others to follow his lead.

One of the most important triumphs of the early campaign was that of convincing Ed and Nadine Carson and Dick and Dinky Snell to accept the heavy responsibility of serving as national campaign chairs. Both couples had been among Phoenix’s hardest-working and most-effective civic leaders for decades, and it would have been easy for them to say “We’ve done our bit, and then some; let someone else carry the load on this one.” But they answered Coor’s call cheerfully and with exemplary determination to make the campaign succeed.

Ed Carson and Dinky Snell served with distinction on the ASU Foundation board of directors, and she was elected chair of the board in 1998.

A 1951 graduate of Arizona State College, Ed Carson had impressed Hugh Gruwell and other senior officers of the First National Bank of Arizona with his competence as a student leader.

He joined the bank staff upon graduating and spent his entire career with that organization, which later became First Interstate Bancorp.

While moving up the management ladder in Phoenix, he distinguished himself in the Boy Scouts and a variety of other community service activities. He continued to be a community leader in Los Angeles when he became chairman and chief executive officer of First Interstate.

Throughout those years he worked tirelessly for his alma mater, earning the highest honors bestowed by the ASU Alumni Association and the College of Business. In 1993 the university presented him an honorary doctorate.

Nadine and Ed Carson met while they were students at Arizona State College. Nadine graduated from ASC in 1953, taught home economics in the Phoenix area and was a lifelong supporter of education. Service to her alma mater had been a passion of hers for decades. Long before accepting a leadership role in the ASU Campaign for Leadership she was active in the

alumni association and the 1885 Society. She and her husband provided generous financial support to the Edward and Nadine Carson Presidential Chair, the Old Main Restoration and the Ed and Nadine Student-Athlete Center in intercollegiate athletics. Among Nadine’s many honors were the Albert Schweitzer Award by the Hugh O’Brian Leadership Foundation, the Leadership Award by the Big Sisters of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Humanitarian Award.

Dinky Snell, a political science graduate of Stanford University, was one of ASU’s more dedicated supporters. She was named Phoenix Woman of the Year in 1989, Phoenix Volunteer of the Year in 1993 and was honored with the Distinguished Service Award by the ASU College of Education in 1998. Her principal service activities centered on the YWCA, Arizona Academic Decathlon Association, Arizona Science Center and Girl Scouts. Joining the ASU Foundation board in 1991, she also served the university as a member of the dean’s councils in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and College of Education. At the foundation Dinky contributed her time on the executive committee, leadership and membership committee and the ad hoc committee for strategic planning.

Looking back on her service, she once said the community didn’t really see a need to get involved with ASU until Lattie Coor entered the picture. “For years we went across the Salt River to watch the football games and came back across and that was our only connection to ASU. Until Lattie Coor became the president most people were like that. Because ASU was a state institution, people were not accustomed to them seeking money,” Snell said. “But the more I got involved and began learning about its various programs, what was being done and how people were thinking, the more I saw the university as a flower getting ready to bloom.”

Dick Snell, also a Stanford graduate, had led some of the Valley’s largest corporations: Pinnacle West, Aztar Corporation and Ramada Inn. The list of his community leadership activities was impressive. He was capital campaign chair for the Arizona Science Center and for the Valley of the Sun YMCA. At different times, he chaired the Phoenix Aviation Advisory Board, American Graduate School of International Management board, Phoenix Community Alliance and the Phoenix Symphony Association. In addition to serving as co-chair of the ASU Campaign for Leadership, he was chair of leadership development for the campaign, with

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ASU lectures and student participation have become more interactive thanks to technology.

day-to-day involvement in counseling senior fundraising staff and actively pursuing major gift prospects. He was a member of the dean’s advisory councils in the ASU College of Law and College of Public Programs.

Arizona State University was blessed to have such amazingly talented and service-minded campaign leaders as the Carsons and the Snells.

As might be expected, the October 1997 meeting of the ASU Foundation board was devoted primarily to the ASU Campaign for Leadership. In addition to her duties as co-chair of the campaign, Dinky Snell served as secretary of the foundation and prepared the minutes of the meeting. Tere Mendoza, a member of the development office staff and vice president of the foundation, had been designated by Lonnie Ostrom as director of the campaign. Chair Ulrich called on her in the first order of business to report on campaign progress and to introduce members of her staff.

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Ulrich, who had stressed the importance of board members’ giving to the fund drive, then reported that board participation was 69 percent. “There are 14 board members who have not yet made a gift,” Ulrich declared to attendees. He did not mention any names, but he made it clear that he would not be satisfied with less than 100 percent participation.

Foundation board members already had contributed $16 million, and the campaign’s executive committee had given $33.5 million. Certainly no one could accuse leaders of the campaign of foot-dragging support.

Secretary Snell noted in the minutes that ASU Vice President Allan Price was introduced and urged board members to assist in fundraising efforts by encouraging state legislators to support a proposal to convert the state’s University Land Trust Fund to the Eminent Scholars Matching Grant Fund.

Chapter Sixteen - The Best Triple-A Team in America

“This action,” explained Price, “will provide an additional $1.4 million annually to help attract and retain faculty who have achieved eminence in their fields. Transferring these funds would equal the effect of obtaining $32 million in private endowment funds and would have a major impact on the campaign.”

Because state support of Arizona’s three universities had for many years languished near the bottom of the 50 states in per-capita student funding, it was evident that private funding was absolutely essential to the future of Arizona higher education. It was especially essential to ASU, which had long struggled with one of the lowest per-capita student funding rankings among all state universities in the nation.

So it was that in the fall of 1997 the ASU Campaign for Leadership was officially launched. The groundwork had been carefully laid, the leaders appointed and the need for private funding clearly established.

Though the goals seemed impossibly high and the task ahead impossibly arduous, both the ASU Foundation and university leaders were determined to roll up their sleeves and get the job done.

ASU Homecoming spirit

Students enjoy a break in the sustainable Shade Garden outside Taylor Place Residence Hall, located on ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus.

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chapter seventeen

toward a more effective partnership As the ASU Campaign for Leadership progressed through its early months, with greater success than even the most optimistic participants had hoped for, the foundation was formulating plans for far-reaching changes in its relationship with the university.

A handwritten note by ASU Foundation President Lonnie Ostrom outlining early strategies for financial support for the university

By April 2000 the new ASU Foundation strategic plan was packaged in a document ready for presentation to the university administration for final approval.

“The board of directors realized that the ASU Campaign for Leadership had transformed the foundation from an essentially advisory group to a dynamic force operating as a partner of the university,” remembered Lonnie Ostrom. “We were demonstrating our desire and our ability to assume a dramatically more important role in directing fundraising operations.”

Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on the Tempe campus was the last public commission of Frank Lloyd Wright, and is considered an architectural benchmark. Construction began May 23, 1962, and took 25 months to complete.

One of the goals of the new strategic plan was to gain an unprecedented measure of autonomy for the ASU Foundation.

Most of the major university foundations across America had been moving in that direction for several decades as their size and complexity of operations increased. ASU’s foundation was one of the fastest-growing in the nation and its leaders were becoming increasingly convinced that it could serve the university more effectively as a more independent entity.

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“Autonomy” is a word fraught with both opportunity and peril. With autonomy, the foundation would be able to shed most of its dependence on the university for office facilities, staffing, accounting and much more. Moreover, autonomy would assure compliance with federal rules for 50l(c)(3) organizations, enable it to maintain its not-for-profit status, ensure privacy for donors and protect its assets from those who might assert that these are public funds subject to control by the Arizona Legislature.

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was certain a strategic plan should be drawn up to establish a friendly working partnership with the university.

That would not be an easy task. There were those in the ASU administration who had exercised a high level of control of fundraising efforts for many years, and they were understandably reluctant to diminish that control.

Conversely, autonomy would cut the foundation off from much of its substantial financial support from the university. Assuming responsibility for maintaining the university’s multi-milliondollar fundraising operation would place a heavy financial burden on the foundation and make community support more essential than ever before.

For that reason the executive committee of the foundation met with President Lattie Coor for several months of discussions before the actual preparation of the strategic plan was started. In January 2000 the foundation engaged a consultant, Pat Beaty, who had worked with its leaders before and was a recognized authority on strategic planning and marketing. She played an important role in the development of the plan and actually wrote much of it.

Ostrom and other ASU Foundation leaders were well aware their organization had met with a measure of opposition from the university administration when it sought autonomy, and that hard feelings on both sides had resulted. Foundation leadership

To ensure that the partnership would be beneficial to both the university and the foundation an ad hoc foundation committee met over two months to formulate a three-year plan. Once that document was approved by foundation executive committee members, they

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strategic in 2000 Richard Parker served the ASU Foundation as both chair-elect and head of the organization’s strategic plan committee, which began deliberations in February 2000 to ensure fiduciary responsibility to its donors and increase private giving to the university.

Joining Parker on the committee were: Dinky Snell, foundation chair

John Christian

Pam Grant

Diane McCarthy

Marty Alvarez

Lonnie Ostrom

agreed to submit it to Coor and his lieutenants for possible revisions and approval.

Because of the careful liaison between the foundation and the ASU administration in the preliminary stages, the strategic plan committee expected few obstacles would be encountered in drawing up the final agreement.

The primary goals of the new strategic plan were clearly stated in its introductory paragraphs: “The foundation’s board of directors recognizes that its growth in assets will forever change the philanthropic climate of ASU and Greater Phoenix. The success of the current fundraising campaign — which reflects the rising stature of ASU and its visionary leadership, the strong economy of recent years and the private sector’s growing commitment to higher education — requires the ASU Foundation to reposition itself for the future by adopting a strategic plan that addresses two primary purposes: •

First, the strategy must ensure that the foundation is able to meet its fiduciary responsibilities to a rapidly increasing number of donors.

•

Second, the strategy must support the continued and projected growth of private giving to ASU.”

“The strategic plan committee and some members of the executive committee met in four half-day sessions,” said Ostrom, “and they were productive and rarely contentious meetings. Disagreements were ironed out and we arrived at a plan that was acceptable to all. Committee members were superb in their willingness to work together to hammer out a workable plan, and they proved their devotion to the university in everything they did. I was very proud of every one of them.”

Every member of the planning group was enthusiastic about the importance of the new plan to the future of the university and that of the Greater Phoenix community, and they were in solid agreement that the time was ripe for it.

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“A compelling factor in the planning sessions was the unanimous belief that there will never be a better time for repositioning the foundation to better serve ASU,” the committee put into words in the early stages of the document. “A strong conviction of both the executive committee of the foundation and ASU President Lattie Coor is that the independent 501(c)(3) status of the ASU Foundation must be clear and convincing to all.

The 1990 strategic plan was a landmark document in the history of the ASU Foundation, and it set appropriate goals for that time and that stage of the foundation’s development. But much had happened in the ensuing decade.

The university’s first major capital campaign had raised $114 million — far more than anyone had predicted — and ASU had gained impressive community support. By 2000 a second, much more ambitious campaign had already exceeded its initial goal of $300 million and was well on the way to $400 million.

“Equally important, the right leadership is in place. The three principals — ASU President Lattie Coor, ASU Foundation Chair Alice Snell and ASU Foundation President Lonnie Ostrom — offer a rare combination of experience, historical knowledge and commitment to both ASU and Greater Phoenix that will not be duplicated in the foreseeable future.”

More importantly, the ASU Foundation had accepted a leadership role in fundraising that had never before been envisioned. Now it was no longer an advisory group, and not just an arm of ASU outreach efforts. The foundation was a full-fledged partner, devoted to the university’s growth and maturation and ready to stand on its own and accept broad new responsibilities.

The ASU Campaign for Leadership was entering its final year, and the foundation was determined to have a working plan in place by the time the campaign was concluded.

Eight major goals for the foundation were identified during the planning sessions. As stated in the finished document, they were: 1. governance. To establish the ASU Foundation as an independent body, in practice as well as law, led by its board of directors and foundation president, working closely with and being accountable to the ASU president for achieving the fundraising priorities identified by the academic leadership of Arizona State University.

2. administration/management. To build the organizational capacity of the ASU Foundation in ways that ensure efficient coordination and management of all foundation programs and activities.

3. resource development. To expand and diversify private support for university priorities.

While ASU is considered the national model for a New American University, Old Main is a reminder of more than a century of history.

4. resource management. To balance the need for a competitive, yet sound, investment strategy for foundational assets with the board’s fiduciary responsibilities to each donor and the donor’s designated university beneficiary.

5. stewardship and donor relations.

To implement a comprehensive donor relations program that embraces all campuses, colleges and development units of the university, including ASU West, ASU East, intercollegiate athletics, public events and KAET. 6. gift processing. To assure efficient and reliable gift processing and reporting for all donors.

7. advocacy. To promote university goals, objectives and priorities with appropriate constituencies and, conversely, to enhance ASU’s awareness and understanding of changing community needs and goals.

8. marketing. To implement a comprehensive, ongoing marketing plan that raises the level of philanthropy to ASU while creating a strong brand awareness of the ASU Foundation as the premier volunteer organization of Greater Phoenix and one of the nation’s most successful charitable organizations in support of higher education.

Two of the eight goals stand out: First, that the foundation was to be an independent body, “in practice as well as in law,” working with and accountable to the ASU president; second, that the foundation was to be recognized as “the premier volunteer organization of Greater Phoenix” and one of the most successful in the nation.

What brave words! And what giant steps the foundation had taken from only a decade before, when its very existence was not widely known and certainly not widely appreciated.

The strategic plan committee listed governance as its number-one priority, and with good cause.

As “Goal No. 1” in its final document, the governance statement contained two of the most important changes in the relationship between ASU and its foundation.

The John J. Ross-William C. Blakley Law Library, adjacent to the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law, was designed by the Atlanta firm Scogin Elam and Bray and built by the Leo A. Daly Company in 1993 at a cost of $9.5 million. It is recognized as an architecturally significant building and has received numerous honors and design awards.

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First was what some called the foundation’s “declaration of independence.” The document stated in no uncertain terms that the new relationship would establish the ASU Foundation as an independent body, which would work closely with, and be accountable to, the ASU president.

Second, it declared that henceforth all university development functions conducted by ASU employees would be coordinated under the president of the ASU Foundation, who would have the title of “ASU Foundation president/chief development officer.” Behind this statement was a story of conflict that had strained the usually amiable relationship between leaders of the foundation and the university.

The ASU director of development had served as ASU Foundation president for decades, from the days of Carl Miller’s tenure in those positions. But in 1998 the university administration decided to separate the two positions and place the ASU Office of Development under control of the vice president for institutional advancement.

That move was highly unpopular with the foundation board, members of which expressed their displeasure to President Coor in no uncertain terms.

That brief conflict probably accelerated the move toward preparation of the new strategic plan, which provided for a return to consolidation of the ASU Development Office and ASU Foundation leadership positions. The strategic plan stated “the foundation and the development program both exist to increase private gifts to benefit the university. Consolidating this function under a single office is a pragmatic and yet highly symbolic step.”

It went on to say the shift would heighten the visibility of the foundation board, strengthen the relationship between foundation activities and the fundraising activities of the development staff and reduce duplication of effort. Finally, it stated, “the step will create a professional development position of sufficient stature and salary to attract the nation’s top fundraising talent.”

The ASU Foundation used this former bank on Mill Avenue and Broadway Road as its headquarters for many years.

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The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, a 100,000-square-foot complex in the heart of downtown Phoenix, provides aspiring journalists and communication professionals unparalleled opportunities in the digital age.

The new three-year plan contained many other important changes in the relationship between the foundation and the university, most of them reflecting the determination of foundation leaders to play a more important role in private support of the university and their desire for more independence in foundation operations.

One of the most important of these changes was aimed at “ensuring donor confidentiality and compliance with donor intentions.” Transferring development, finance and record keeping, planned giving, and donor research functions from the university to the foundation was deemed essential.

Successful as the two fundraising campaigns had been, it was recognized that such outpourings of energy and resources could not be the principal source of funding for the university in the future. A more stable annual giving program was deemed necessary.

Another facet of the new plan was that of attracting more donors of all types, including ASU alumni, friends, parents, faculty, staff, corporations and private foundations. Still another was the development of an ongoing source of quality volunteer leadership to maintain readiness for future campaigns and special fundraising opportunities.

Better gift processing and acknowledgment was cited as essential. Enhancing public understanding of ASU goals and priorities and, conversely, increasing the university’s awareness of community needs and aspirations were included in the document. So was the creation of new committees within the ASU Foundation to achieve these and other goals.

Dinky Snell, who chaired the foundation during the formulation of the ASU strategic plan, later admitted there had been a time when she questioned the need for public universities to raise funds in the private sector. “I thought it was the state’s responsibility to fund state universities,”

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she said, “but when I became more involved in community affairs, I came to realize that state support was not enough if a university was to reach its full potential and serve its community as it should.”

As a member and officer of the foundation board, and more recently as co-chair of ASU’s most ambitious fundraising campaign, she had devoted much of her time and energy to making the university one of the finest in the nation. She had watched ASU’s dizzying climb toward academic excellence with growing pride.

“I saw many advantages to the ASU Foundation in the new strategic plan,” she declared at the time. “In addition to those cited in the report I would include these: more involvement of the foundation board, strengthening the quality and prestige of the board and greatly improving the liaison between the foundation and the university to name only a few.

Later she clarified, “It would let us ensure privacy for our donors and for the foundation, since as a private foundation we would not be forced by law, as government agencies were, to make all records public.

“I believed it would stabilize giving in the future, lead to the involvement of many thousands of ASU alumni and others who had not given before and increase the community’s pride in the university.”

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Charles “Chuck” Wagner, ASU Foundation vice president and director of finance, came to the foundation in May 1995 after working for accounting firms and major banks in Arizona and California. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 1973, had military service in Hawaii, then came to Tucson to join the staff of the Ernst & Ernst accounting firm. He accepted a position with First Interstate Bank of Arizona in Phoenix in 1982 and became the bank’s comptroller a year later.

It was at First Interstate Bank of Arizona that he first met its president, Ed Carson. Not long after, Carson moved to Los Angeles to become chief executive officer of First Interstate Bancorp, but he continued his association with the ASU Foundation. Upon his retirement he returned to Arizona and became increasingly active in service to his alma mater. His acceptance of a cochairmanship in the ASU Campaign for Leadership brought him and Wagner even closer as planning for the foundation’s future progressed.

“When I arrived the ASU Foundation had been without a finance officer for nearly a year,” Wagner recalled. “While the accounting and gift processing functions were reasonably effective, several other areas of the financial operation needed improvement. The investment process, in particular, was not what I thought it should be. The computer system was outdated. The foundation’s finance committee was not being involved as effectively as it might have been. But with the complete cooperation of Lonnie Ostrom and the foundation board, most of those problem areas were improved.”

The foundation’s assets more than tripled during the five years of the Campaign for Leadership.

The endowment reached $140 million in 2000, and undesignated funds totaled $60 million. The Seattle-based investment counseling firm of Wurts & Associates was supervising investment of these funds.

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The quality of the program in the School of Music in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is demonstrated by many ASU graduates who are successful performers, composers, music therapists, conductors and teachers regionally, nationally and internationally.

Wagner’s duties and responsibilities accelerated during the fund campaign and reached even greater heights during 1999–2000 when he supervised many of the changeovers in financial and personnel operations occasioned by the implementation of the 2000 strategic plan.

“We actually created a business of major proportions in a little more than six months,” Wagner said. “Instead of an organization dependent on Arizona State University for most of its accounting, gift processing and personnel operations, the foundation controlled those operations. We controlled payroll, promotions, salary scales, job descriptions, insurance, retirement — the whole works.”

The foundation had 25 employees, and expected to double the number on its team within a few years. There was considerable consternation among the staff when details of the new partnership with ASU were announced. They were understandably concerned about the prospect of losing the relatively generous fringe benefits offered by the university, particularly in retirement benefits and health insurance. Would the ASU Foundation, as an independent entity, be able to match those perks?

When the strategic plan was adopted, testing the loyalty of the foundation staff, not one of the 25 employees had departed.

Wagner acknowledged that the changeover to independence would not be without its problems.

Like a teenager leaving the security of home for the first time, the foundation would have to operate with maximum efficiency to meet its new financial challenges.

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ASU and the foundation grew to maturity along with the rest of Arizona, which celebrated its centennial in 2012.

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chapter eighteen

anatomy of a fundraising miracle

Sparky has been ASU’s official mascot since 1946.

During the months in which the new strategic plan was being hammered out the ASU Campaign for Leadership was progressing at a pace few thought possible. Don Ulrich, who headed the campaign planning committee, said, “Our original goal of $200 million, which some of us felt was beyond the realm of probability, soon seemed reachable. Even though some of the really big gifts we had hoped for didn’t come through right away, we were getting support in the million-dollar range from others we hadn’t counted on. We started thinking more in terms of $250 million as a possible goal.”

Roger Olson, author of the ASU campaign’s readiness study, had announced in 1994 that the university might be able to raise $240 million to $260 million with an all-out effort. But President Lattie Coor, who liked round numbers, said, “Let’s go for $300 million.”

“That’s easy for him to say,” some campaign staffers may have grumbled in private. After all, adding a cool $50 million to an already lofty goal seemed unrealistically optimistic.

“Once we got over the shock of saying ‘$300 million,’ we came to realize that President Coor had done us a favor,” said Lonnie Ostrom in retrospect. “We saw that he had more confidence in us than we had in ourselves.”

With a campaign goal established the ASU Foundation and university development leaders went to work in feverish earnest. They agreed that three principal tasks confronted them.

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The foundation’s role in the Campaign for Leadership was one of total immersion. Never in any previous campaign had the board accepted such a degree of leadership and responsibility.

First, new staff members had to be found and hired to do myriad tasks associated with a campaign of this magnitude.

Because the campaign budget was woefully inadequate — less than $3 million — it would be extremely difficult to attract experienced staff people and provide them with the tools to get the job done. Here the ASU Foundation stepped in and raised substantial sums to supplement the campaign budget.

Second, identification of top donor prospects was absolutely essential.

Intensive research and a multitude of personal contacts were necessary.

Third, determination of campaign priorities had to be made. Not only did the most pressing needs of each college have to be identified, it was necessary to choose those needs most likely to strike a responsive chord in potential donors’ hearts.

Hiring outstanding staff people was one of the early tasks. The quality of performance, energy and loyalty of all those chosen was evident in the success of their efforts throughout the campaign.

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One of the most important of all positions — staff or volunteer — was that of campaign director. Ostrom entrusted that job to Tere Mendoza, and she proved herself worthy of his trust. The campaign director, a member of the development office staff, was responsible for coordinating the efforts of campaign staff and volunteers. So successfully did Mendoza perform that she was lured away in February 1998 to become the vice president for university advancement at San Diego State University.

Becky Cole succeeded Mendoza as campaign director. She, too, was so impressive in the position that she was hired in April 1999 to become director of development at Oregon State University.

After Cole’s departure Julie Gillespie became director of the ASU Campaign for Leadership. She came to Tempe in January 1996 from the University of South Florida, where she had an impressive fundraising record. Her first assignment at ASU was as director of major gifts, and her success in that area earned her the promotion to director of the campaign.

Chapter Eighteen - Anatomy of a Fundraising Miracle

“I was impressed by everything I saw at ASU, from the first moment I arrived on campus,” declared Gillespie, who became a rabid Sun Devil booster in record time.

“There was a spirit of optimism — a feeling that we were all working together to build one of the nation’s great universities.

“I’m especially impressed by the quality and devotion of our volunteer leadership,” she said at the time. “The ASU Foundation board members are wonderful, and they have given, or have been responsible for, a substantial part of the money we have raised. I can say the same about the campaign executive committee and the alumni association board. With people like these on our side, how can we fail?”

Gillespie had high praise for the development officers serving in the various ASU colleges. She believed the decentralized development plan employed by ASU gave officers the opportunity to have close relationships with college leaders and to be more aware of the needs and strengths of the colleges.

Prospect identification, so critical to all that followed, was a team effort involving ASU Foundation members and staff, alumni, academic leaders, friends of the university and President Coor himself.

Elizabeth “Liz” McHugh, the development office director of prospect management and research, headed a hard-working staff of five who conducted extensive research on potential donors. They provided the university with vital information about corporations and individuals — their special interests, their past philanthropy, their community service and other information needed by fundraisers.

Increasing achievement requires a collective effort between high-performing faculty and motivated, curious students.

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“We used newspaper clippings, the Internet, personal contacts, public records — any sources that could help us know a prospect better,” she explained. “We gathered, refined and stored this information, and it was useful in virtually every gift solicitation made in the campaign.”

McHugh served on the UCLA development staff before coming to ASU in 1985 with her husband Kevin, who joined the faculty of the ASU Department of Geography. Upon her arrival she worked in the office of the vice president for research until 1988, when she joined the ASU development office staff as director of research. Like Gillespie, McHugh became an enthusiastic Arizona State University booster.

Determining priorities for the campaign was particularly critical. Early in the planning stage ASU administration determined top

priorities should fall under three categories: great faculty, great students and great communities. Unlike many such campaigns, this one did not seek funding for bricks and mortar. Even the procurement of equipment was given secondary emphasis.

This campaign was to be about people: world-class teachers and researchers, the best students in Arizona and beyond, and the best people and programs to enhance the quality of life in central Arizona and throughout the state.

To get some broad understanding of needs in ASU’s colleges and associated activities, deans and department heads were asked to draw up prioritized lists.

The first time around, the submitted compilation more closely resembled a wish list. When added up the requests totaled more than $700 million.

Campaign leaders asked the deans and directors to try again — this time aiming closer to reality. The second go-around was a little more realistic, but not much.

It totaled $600 million — twice the campaign’s financial goal.

A third time, the request went out to the university’s academic leaders, along with some stern admonitions about asking only for funding of their most critical needs. This time the requests totaled only about $300 million.

The campaign to restore Old Main was already in progress. Because it struck a chord on the heartstrings of former students and others who bled maroon and gold, it had a special appeal for alumni, especially since the restored Old Main was to become the long-wished-for headquarters building for the ASU Alumni Association. Most of the other funding requests had their own Old Main was given a much-needed renovation in the late 1990s, thanks to generous alumni and foundation members. It currently is used as the headquarters of the ASU Alumni Association.

audiences of potential givers. President Coor’s clarion call for the Greater Phoenix community to support its state university, for the good of the local economy and the quality of life for all citizens, had a powerful effect.

“Naturally, as a university serving all of Arizona and the nation, we wanted our appeals to be broad-based,” Ostrom said. “But we knew we had to target the Greater Phoenix community if the campaign was to succeed. This was Arizona State University’s turf, and we wanted to send out that message loud and clear. We were well aware that the University of Arizona did a great deal of its fundraising in the Phoenix area, but we intended to contest the U of A on our own turf all the way from that point forward. Our friends at the U of A had a virtual lock on Tucson for many decades, and we wanted to approach that success in our own area.”

“Great teachers” — the first goal of the ASU Campaign for Leadership — was the ongoing effort to attract nationally and internationally respected faculty. “Franchise players,” they were often called, teachers and researchers around whom great academic departments and colleges are built. Their presence at ASU encouraged other top-flight professors to come, and they in turn attracted the best and brightest students.

These franchise players came — and still come — to a university for many reasons, the most important of which were salary, reputation of the institution, staff assistance and resources, and a rich intellectual environment. Only by supplementing state salaries and providing for other professional needs of professors, with funding from the private sector, could a university hope to compete with other institutions in the continuing battle to build a world-class teaching and research staff.

At the outset of the campaign, ASU could boast only six endowed chairs. So convinced were university academic leaders of their importance that they placed these positions of prestige and competitive salary at the top of their lists of campaign goals.

Aerial view of “A” Mountain, where students whitewash the 60-foot concrete letter at the start of each new school year.

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“The ASU Campaign for Leadership fundamentally elevated the place of Arizona State University in the ranks of America’s major universities. Without the ASU Foundation, the campaign could not have succeeded — indeed, could not have been launched.”

— former ASU President Lattie Coor

How many endowed chairs did they hope to fund? The answer was a shocker: no less than 50. Who could have imagined then that ASU would have 90 such chairs by the time the campaign ended?

The Barry Goldwater Arizona Heritage Chair in American Institutions, established during more than a decade of funding by friends of Senator Goldwater, claimed an endowment of more than $5 million in 2000. Most other endowed chairs at ASU were being funded with gifts of $1 million to $2 million.

In most cases chairs and professorships were used to recruit scholars to permanent faculty positions. Others were created to fund short- or longterm teaching visits by national or international luminaries in a given field.

Among the visitors to ASU were Henry Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state; Jeane Kirkpatrick, former United Nations ambassador; U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and a Nobel Prize-winner in economics, Milton Friedman.

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One individual who funded two chairs during the campaign was Virginia Ullman, a friend of Kay Gammage and a well-known philanthropist.

Ostrom met with her many times over the years, always bringing her ice cream and hot fudge for dessert.

On one occasion, she had asked Ostrom to find a student to serve as valet at her French club meeting on a Saturday.

Ostrom was glad to help and found someone, who, unfortunately, became sick at the last minute.

So Ostrom stepped in. He parked about 20 cars as volunteers arrived, and retrieved the cars when they left. A few guests thought they recognized Ostrom from somewhere, but could not place him. Nevertheless, he completed his task and made $8 in tips. Ullman loved telling people the story and said Ostrom was the best, and oldest, valet she ever used.

Chapter Eighteen - Anatomy of a Fundraising Miracle

“Great students” was another goal chosen by the university. Faculty members were virtually unanimous in listing scholarship funds among their most pressing needs. While outstanding students, like outstanding faculty, chose ASU for many reasons, the availability of scholarship money ranked high among them.

“The ASU Foundation accepted the major responsibility for raising scholarship money,” said Dinky Snell. “We were determined to keep Arizona’s best high school graduates in the state, and especially at ASU. And we achieved remarkable success in that effort.”

The campaign sought outstanding high school graduates in two categories. The first, “Gifts of Hope,” made financial assistance available to outstanding students — not necessarily merit scholars — who showed great academic promise but who could not attend the university without substantial help. The second was “Gifts of Excellence,” reserved for merit scholars regardless of their families’ ability to pay. The amazing success of that program was evident in the fact that ASU attracted 132 National Merit Scholars to its freshman class in 1999–2000, placing the university sixth among America’s public universities and colleges in the number enrolled.

To give added emphasis to the foundation’s moneyraising efforts in the field of scholarships the Scottsdale-based marketing firm of Lavidge Hiegel was employed to bring the message to the widest possible audience of young people and their families.

Both graduates of ASU, Bill Lavidge and Mark Hiegel worked tirelessly and effectively in the marketing effort.

One foundation board member, Wayne Doran, was successful in funding both faculty and students.

Through his senior executive position with Ford and his support of ASU’s direction, Doran steered $3.18 million to the colleges of business and engineering and applied science. In addition, Doran and his wife Maureen used their personal wealth to initiate a Doran Scholars program that continues to fund deserving students. Both Dorans served on the campaign committee and Wayne later served for three years as chairman of the foundation.

The Hayden Library holds miles and miles of books, and is a national leader in transitioning to online resources, electronic journals and books.

“The ASU Foundation accepted the major responsibility for raising scholarship money. We were determined to keep Arizona’s best high school graduates in the state, and especially at ASU. And we achieved remarkable success in that effort.”

— former ASU Foundation Chair Dinky Snell

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“Great communities” was the third goal of the campaign. Gifts in this category were directed toward enriching the economy, advancing knowledge and quality of life, building community and neighborhood quality, and enriching the Arizona lifestyle through public television offerings, intercollegiate athletics, fine arts and in many other areas.

“During the first hundred years of our history ASU’s mission was to provide the people of Arizona, and particularly Maricopa County, with access to higher education,” an early campaign brochure stated. “Today Arizona State University is a mature public institution encompassing three campuses, more than twenty colleges and major academic units, and hundreds of individual departments. But ASU’s impact extends far beyond the classrooms, laboratories and libraries of the university. It reaches deep into the community with an array of programs and services and touches the lives of

everyone who lives here. The campaign will invest $150 million in programs that serve the highest public purpose.”

With campaign leadership in place, financial goals set, prospects identified, priorities established and staff employed, the hardest work was ready to begin. Prospects had to be wooed, informed, involved and asked for gifts.

Rarely was a major gift given unless a series of contacts — “touches,” some called them — was made over a period of time by several people.

Involvement was especially important.

Corporations, community leaders and others asked to help build university departments and programs in which they had special interests made major gifts; Motorola, for example. Almost from the day Daniel Noble brought the first Motorola semiconductor plant to Phoenix not long after the end of World War II, the corporation had been one of the

community’s most important employers and community supporters. Because of its interest in developing ASU’s College of Engineering, Motorola made important contributions to the university for many years. In gratitude for his service to ASU and the ASU Foundation, Noble was honored with the naming of the university’s Noble Library of Science and Engineering.

Gary Tooker, chief executive officer of Motorola and an ASU alumnus, served on the boards of both the ASU Foundation and the ASU Alumni Association. He and his wife Diane were among the university’s most effective friends. When the Campaign for Leadership was being planned university leaders conferred with Tooker to learn what he believed the College of Engineering should aspire to be. He told them. The Motorola chief worked closely with deans and department chairs, in cooperation with academic leaders of the College of Business, to draw up an ambitious plan for the Motorola Manufacturing Institute. In addition the corporation worked with ASU’s Morrison Institute to develop plans for recruiting from central Arizona’s Hispanic community for the booming high-tech industry.

Campaign workers hoped Motorola would contribute as much as $5 million to these efforts. Instead, the total Motorola gift exceeded $10 million.

“This was our first $10 million gift,” Ostrom recalled with deep appreciation.

“It helped raise our sights and helped immeasurably in conducting the rest of the campaign.”

First Interstate Bank was also generous to the foundation. Ed Carson, longtime chief executive officer of the bank corporation and an ASU alumnus, had contributed generously to many ASU causes over the years. He and his wife

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Nadine were announced as co-chairs (with Dick and Dinky Snell) at the outset of the ASU Campaign for Leadership. Ed Carson’s successor as CEO of First Interstate Arizona, Bill Randall, and John Lewis joined Carson and College of Business senior faculty in planning the First Interstate Bank Center for Services Marketing and Management in the College of Business.

One of the jewels in the new center was an endowed scholarship named in honor of Carson.

First Interstate also gave a $1 million gift to the Business College Hispanic Center and made contributions to other needs of the college. When First Interstate and Wells Fargo Bank merged and took the Wells Fargo name, the marketing center was renamed the ASU Center for Services Marketing and Management. The Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing was funded by the bank.

Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation, and his wife Barbara made major contributions of time, talent and treasure to ASU. In the early months of the campaign they gave $250,000 to fund scholarships in the colleges of business, engineering and applied sciences, liberal arts and sciences, and public programs. Craig, an alumnus of Stanford University, and Barbara, who earned three degrees from ASU, served on the executive committee of the campaign.

In January 2000 the Barretts told friends they wanted to present a large enough gift to ASU to make President Coor speechless. They succeeded.

They made a gift of $10 million — the largest personal contribution the university had ever received. They chose to direct their gift to the ASU Honors College, one of Coor’s major campaign priorities. In appreciation for their generosity the college is named Barrett, The Honors College at ASU.

The Barrett Honors College on the Tempe campus was designed with input from Barrett students, faculty and staff to function as its own community where students also enjoy the resources that exist within a large university.

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It was no surprise that a former chair of the ASU Foundation board of directors and one of the university’s most loyal and generous supporters, Kay Herberger, decided to make a major gift to the university during the campaign. It was the magnitude of the gift that shocked and thrilled President Coor, the campaign staff and College of Fine Arts Dean Bob Wills.

Early in 2000 news media announced that Herberger had made a contribution of $12 million to the College of Fine Arts in her name and that of her late husband Robert.

She needed no “touches” to make her decision, but she acknowledged the help and encouragement of several top ASU academic executives, Wills and Tom Fay, the Fine Arts College development director.

David Lincoln was an enthusiastic supporter of ASU and a member of the ASU Foundation. The Lincoln family had been a pillar of Greater Phoenix philanthropy for decades, and the John C. Lincoln Hospital group of care facilities is one of many community assets that owe their existence to the Lincolns.

David Lincoln had been a supporter of the applied ethics program in the College of Business, and that interest led him to make a gift of $5 million to fund the universitywide ASU Center for Applied Ethics. ASU’s Senior Vice President and Provost Milton Glick and Ostrom were two of several major influences in planning the gift.

These were a few stories about the remarkable successes of the ASU Campaign for Leadership and how some of its major gifts came to be made. Hundreds of others could be told.

Painstaking research, patient cultivation, involvement of prospects in the work of the university — all these paid off. Two of the remarkable totals in the process: 90 percent of those asked to serve on the campaign executive committee accepted the challenge, and 80 percent of those prospects who were asked to contribute a million dollars or more did so.

By mid-summer 2000 the early goals had long since been junked. Lattie Coor’s $300 million target had been surpassed months before, and the campaign was cruising past the $400 million mark with a year yet to go.

A fundraising miracle? You wouldn’t be wrong to call it that.

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chapter nineteen

they labored behind the scenes Transforming the Arizona State University Foundation from a small organization, one engaged primarily in receiving occasional gifts of money or real estate, into one of the nation’s major educational foundations took place in less than 30 years. That transformation was brought about by a host of dedicated community volunteers and university staff leaders who dreamed impossible dreams and made them come true.

Those in the spotlight of public recognition were well known then, and their legacies are cemented in the history of the university and foundation. Among them were leaders such as Kay Herberger, Dick and Alice (Dinky) Snell, Ed and Nadine Carson, Solly Sollenberger, ASU presidents Lattie Coor and J. Russell Nelson, Craig and Barbara Barrett, and ASUF President Lonnie Ostrom. They deserve all the praise that has been heaped on them, and more.

But these were only a few of the hundreds who devoted their energies, loyalty, investments and talents to the building of the ASU Foundation. The cliché “a team effort” was never more appropriate than in this saga.

ASU combined traditional academic units to fuse intellectual strengths across diverse disciplines.

The executive committee of the ASU Foundation for many years was at the forefront of fundraising activity. Members of the committee devoted many hours to foundation business during the periods between quarterly board meetings and were always on call to assist in solving problems and to offer their expertise.

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They served as the ongoing link between the foundation and the university.

Dinky Snell chaired the executive committee during the 1998–2000 period, one of the most crucial in the foundation’s history.

The adoption of the long-range strategic plan, which brought independence to the foundation, and the ASU Campaign for Leadership were two of the most important events of her chairmanship years.

Succeeding her as chairperson was Richard Parker, long a pillar of strength for the foundation. Parker served as president of the ASU Alumni Association and as a member of the board of directors of the ASU Research Park. As a vice president of Sundt Corporation, he was ranked among Arizona’s most respected construction executives.

The skyrocketing growth of the ASU Foundation brought about sweeping changes in the way gifts were recorded, invested and disbursed, and new technologies had committee members striving to keep up. The foundation employed investment counselors and other professionals to ensure that sound fiduciary safeguards were maintained, while at the same time earning the optimum investment

returns consistent with safe investing.

It was during this time that the foundation staff was looking for new programs to engage alumni and community members.

Naomi Goodell, a major-gift fundraiser who had served effectively in the colleges of fine arts and liberal arts and sciences, had heard of a program at the University of Wisconsin called Women in Philanthropy which, as its name suggests, invited women donors to engage with the university.

Goodell visited Wisconsin and, with help from Sharon Arnold, developed a proposal to implement a similar program at the ASU Foundation. It took a few years to get off the ground, but foundation development executives Gretchen Buhlig and Sheila Smith, and Sybil Francis, ASU President Michael Crow’s wife, built a vibrant program that has funded many fledgling organizations within the university.

It was at the end of 2004 that Ostrom decided to return to his faculty position in the marketing department of the W. P. Carey School of Business. He knew he was going to miss the foundation staff and wonderful board members, but he was returning as the Joan and David Lincoln Professor of Applied Business Ethics.

“No one at ASU has been more fortunate than I to work for and with three wonderful presidents. It is a period of time I will always cherish,” Ostrom said upon his departure from the foundation.

Thomas Edison’s famous saying about genius being 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration applies equally as well to success in fundraising. Countless hours devoted to research, innumerable visits with potential donors, attendance at more social events than can be remembered, years of involving community leaders in ASU activities, and more meetings than any human being should be forced to attend — all of these had become ingredients of the ASU Foundation success story.

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The ASU Foundation grew in numbers and investments as Arizona became the fastestgrowing state in the nation, nearing a population of 6 million.

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ASU’s West campus serves a student body of nearly 11,000.

The campus occupies 300 acres in northwest Phoenix, which has become a new frontier for commerce, sports, recreation, the arts and lifelong learning opportunities.

ASU commencement presents the dignity of academic traditions to faculty, staff, students and the community.

Even though ASU had achieved so much in the past century, the coming millennium would yield even greater results. Immediately after directing the hugely successful Campaign for Leadership, ASU President Lattie Coor started talking about his retirement. The achievements during his dozen years at the helm were astonishing.

In time, ASU was named a research university by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This high status enabled the university to achieve major support for research projects and for educating future scientists. President Coor shaped the university into an academic powerhouse and realized his vision

for ASU as a world-class research university comprising excellent students, faculty and staff. Coor further distinguished himself by defining the role of ASU’s fledgling West campus, initiating the establishment of the university’s east-side Polytechnic campus and placing a satellite location in downtown Phoenix in the early 1990s.

Coor’s impact was reflected in the enthusiasm with which the alumni, community and state supported the university’s Campaign for Leadership — the largest fundraising effort in state history. The total gifts during that campaign raised nearly half a billion dollars, and exceeded everyone’s expectations, including Coor’s.

Like the 14 presidents before him, Coor left ASU in a much better place than when he started.

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ASU’s 16th president, Michael M. Crow, took office in July 2002. As an educational thought leader, he called for major alterations to the American higher education system and has transformed ASU into one of the top 100 universities in the world.

Who could possibly succeed Coor?

Furthermore, who would want to attempt to fill those big shoes?

As Coor began thinking about his successor, he knew the person had to possess vision and the ability to adapt.

He sensed a mighty wind of change in the next decade and his words on the matter were prophetic.

“We can’t predict what the world will look like,” Coor said. “What we can do is be poised to move as the demand moves. We will have a much more fully developed organizational capacity to deal with change.”

For years Coor had sought the counsel of Michael Crow, an executive vice provost at Columbia University, where he was also a professor of science and technology policy in the School of International and Public Affairs.

As chief strategist of Columbia’s research enterprise, he led technology and innovation transfer operations, establishing Columbia Innovation

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Enterprises (renamed Science and Technology Ventures), as well as advancing interdisciplinary program development. He played the lead role in the creation of and served as the founding director of The Earth Institute at Columbia, and in 1988 founded the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, dedicated to linking science and technology to optimal social, economic and environmental outcomes.

The 47-year-old academic iconoclast had a stellar reputation according to businessman Wayne Doran, a former vice president of the Ford Motor Company and board member since 1970.

“When I heard that we were seriously considering Michael Crow, I put in a call to my friend Jerry Spire, who was a regent at Columbia University,” Doran said. “I asked him, ‘What do you think of Michael Crow? Would he be a great guy to hire?’ At first he said, ‘Hell no!’

He paused for a while and then said, ‘If you’re thinking of hiring him, I wish you wouldn’t because I want him to be the next president of Columbia.’”

Chapter Twenty - A New American University

Crow was one of a handful of educational thought leaders who had called for major alterations to the American higher education system. He felt that American society had undergone massive shifts over the past 50 years, but the American university system had hardly changed at all. Additionally, he felt economic, societal and cultural needs were not being met and that the U.S. was not adequately teaching its children.

Globally, Crow was concerned that America was losing its grip on the economy.

He believed that ASU needed to increase student access to higher education and give learners a global perspective. He insisted knowledge be linked in meaningful, measureable ways to action and results. He urged universities to differentiate themselves from one another in order to create more solutions to the great challenges faced by society. By addressing these issues, Crow felt, universities could help define the future.

“The success or failure of this country will be determined by a single word: education,” Crow had said.

In essence, Crow’s vision was to redesign the entire university. He was the kind of leader who was either going to fail or succeed in grand fashion ... and failure was not an option.

Sensing the radical changes Crow would institute at ASU, his candidacy for president made some on the foundation board a little more than nervous, admitted Doran.

“Michael’s visions were big and startling, and some people either couldn’t think that big or didn’t have that big of a vision. But the ones who recognized his brilliance were

“The success or failure of this country will be determined by a single word: education.”

– Michael M. Crow, 16th president of Arizona State University

Fletcher Library on ASU’s growing West campus boasts an award-winning design and lots of study space.

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coming forward to say he was our man and that we’d have to figure out a way to make it happen,” Doran recounted. “Everyone eventually recognized change was going to be the order of the day and that Michael could take us right to the top because he saw that ASU was ready for the next jump. Michael was going to be a new university president of today and not of yesterday.”

The board put its money where its mouth was and offered Crow a compensation package that was unprecedented for an ASU president.

Board members, ASU and the greater community discovered Crow was worth every penny when he took office in July 2002.

In his inaugural speech, Crow declared that many universities had patterned themselves after top institutions — Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton; the “gold standard” as it were — but, he said, that was a standard of the past, not the future. He added that 19th-centurystyle universities had become less relevant in an age in which technology and knowledge are the currency.

“An American research university must not be static — it must be dynamic.

In response to the demands and opportunities of a changing world, the American research university must evolve. In recent decades various possible models have been proposed for what many have termed ‘the new American university,’” Crow said in his inaugural delivery. “While each of these models offers insight and ideas, none goes far enough to embrace the changes ahead. When I speak of the new American university, I do not refer to any usage except my own, and my vision for Arizona State University.

“The new American university would cultivate excellence in teaching, research and public service, providing the best possible education to the broadest possible spectrum of society.

The new American university would embrace the educational needs of the entire population — not only a select group, and not only the verbally or mathematically gifted. The success of the new American university will be measured not by who the university excludes, but rather by who the university includes, and from this inclusion will come its contributions to the advancement of society.

“I believe that Arizona State University is uniquely poised to become such an institution.

Not only can Arizona State University surpass its existing excellence in teaching, research and public service, I believe it can break the mold of the current model for the American research university, and serve as a bellwether in its reconceptualization.

“But I cannot do it alone. I ask you to join me in the task of redefining the American research university. I ask you to join me in the task of building the premier new American university — the university that sets the new gold standard.

I ask you to join me in the task of building Arizona State University.”

ASU’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation educates professional nurses using a learner-centered, life-long learning approach to provide the highest quality of health care to individuals, groups and communities, and to effectively respond to the changing health care needs of society.

Crow proposed to create the “New American University” through eight design imperatives that encouraged students, faculty, staff and members of the foundation to: 1. Leverage our place — ASU embraces its cultural, socioeconomic and physical setting.

2. Transform society — ASU catalyzes social change by being connected to social needs.

3. Value entrepreneurship — ASU uses its knowledge and encourages innovation.

4. Conduct use-inspired research — ASU research has purpose and impact.

5. Empower our students — ASU is committed to the success of each unique student.

6. Fuse intellectual disciplines — ASU creates knowledge by transcending academic disciplines.

7.

Be socially embedded — ASU connects with communities through mutually beneficial partnerships.

8. Engage globally — ASU engages with people and issues locally, nationally and internationally.

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The Administration Building on the Polytechnic campus houses offices for the Student Affairs Dean’s Office, Multicultural Student Affairs, Campus Recreation and student government.

Crow directed that the university perform a needs analysis on its infrastructure, and the needs were staggering. The findings revealed the infrastructure was inadequate for the university’s existing student population of 50,000, let alone able to serve the growing numbers of qualified high school graduates who would need near-term access to higher education. Classrooms, research laboratories and offices were cramped and poorly equipped. Major institutional software systems were in need of replacement. There were few residence halls available, so the vast majority of students lived off campus even as freshmen, exacerbating problems with retention and graduation. The university had one main campus in Tempe with two satellite campuses that were viewed as providing duplicate, but lesser-quality programs. Relations with the City of Tempe were strained by concerns over traffic congestion and the negative impact on property values of large numbers of students living in off-campus rental housing.

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The buildings on the West campus were relatively new and in good condition, but many buildings in Tempe were in a significant state of disrepair.

The Polytechnic campus was composed of World War II-era Air Force-base buildings that had been retrofitted for use as classrooms, offices, research labs and residences. None of the buildings on any ASU campus had been designed and built with consideration for minimizing utility costs and negative impacts on the environment.

At the same time, there had been a longstanding university and community ambition to locate a major urban campus in downtown Phoenix. The time was ripe. The city was emerging as a vibrant area thanks to many exciting new projects, including the light rail corridor, convention center expansion, a new 1,000-room hotel and several significant residential developments. Crow envisioned the downtown campus as a place where public and academic life met, and where students would benefit

Chapter Twenty - A New American University

from its proximity to media, health care professionals and public officials. They would be citizens and public servants of the city and be able to pursue their careers and studies in a more dynamic and authentic arrangement.

In the first 10 years of Crow’s service to ASU as its 16th president, despite one of the worst economies in the country’s history, ASU managed to complete an unprecedented amount of new construction, as well as upgrades and renovations to existing facilities. It doubled available space and opened a new campus in downtown Phoenix. The university did this by becoming an entrepreneurial entity, seeking investment and partnerships to make it happen.

The redesign captured the attention of leaders who would become some of the university’s largest donors, including Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton and William Polk Carey, whose lineage could be traced to the Armstrong family that helped launch ASU more than a century earlier.

Crow wasted no time in pursuing philanthropic investments in ASU that would be transformative. In his inaugural year he put ASU Foundation President Ostrom in charge of negotiating a $50 million commitment from Carey that resulted in the renaming of the College of Business to the W. P. Carey School of Business. Little time passed before Ira Fulton requested a meeting with Crow after discussing his support for ASU with Ostrom and foundation Vice President Sheila Smith. Firm believers in Crow’s vision of a New American University, Ira and Mary Lou Fulton were ready to gift $50 million to the College of Engineering and Applied Science, which today stands at ASU as the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Additionally, Fulton surprised his wife with a $5 million gift for a chair in her name to the College of Education, which today is the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

The university wasn’t the only entity that underwent a redesign — the ASU Foundation and its board of directors experienced a radical sea change to reflect Crow’s vision. Crow placed his trust in Craig Weatherup, former president of PepsiCo Inc. and an ASU alum, to restructure the board. Weatherup was no stranger to ASU and was a major force in PepsiCo’s

ASU advocates Connie and Craig Weatherup have left a lasting legacy at the university.

$1-million gift to ASU’s College of Business (known today as the W. P. Carey School of Business) in 1986.

Weatherup was preparing to retire when he met Crow at Triple Creek Guest Ranch, a hideaway in the Bitterroot Mountain Range of the Montana Rockies. According to Weatherup, he was looking forward to spending more time with the family, catching up on his reading and improving his golf game. That plan evaporated when he met ASU’s new president.

“When I first met Michael, and not knowing much about him, I was incredibly impressed with him, as most people are,” Weatherup said. “I thought this guy was either the most intellectually stimulating individual I’d ever met, or he just talked a lot. It had to be one or the other because he had this unbelievable vision. However, the more I listened, the more impressed with Michael I became.

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“Connie and I were in the process of replanting ourselves, exiting PepsiCo and moving from New York to here. Michael kept in touch; and when we moved to Arizona, he basically approached me, along with Wayne Doran, who was the chair of the foundation in those days, and asked me to join the foundation board, which I agreed to do.

Within a very short period of time, he and Wayne were pushing me to chair the board.”

Under Weatherup’s leadership, the ASU Foundation board was reorganized and strengthened to better support Crow and advance his vision for ASU as a New American University.

“The board needed to evolve to embrace the vision of Michael Crow,” Weatherup said. “It was filled with wonderful people.

I had served on many nonprofits in the past and in my estimation this was a time to step back and really understand how the foundation board could start a new chapter in support of ASU. So I formed a group to look at the governance, mechanics of the board, the committee structure, the legal structure, everything. And the board responded to the challenge.

Wayne and Maureen Doran initiated the Doran Scholars program that allows students from the Phoenix Union High School District to pursue higher education and provides them with continual support throughout their ASU journey.

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“We also ended up adding about 25 members to the board, members who brought some added talents and energy, reflecting the New American University vision of Michael Crow.”

In addition to adding board members, the foundation sought to expand its community outreach to involve more community leaders in the advancement of ASU. Specifically, more women. At the forefront of the effort was Sybil Francis, who was joined by philanthropist Julie Wrigley and Angela Cesal, founding members of the foundation’s Women & Philanthropy engagement program in 2002.

“Any community, to be vibrant, needs support from women, and to become involved in Women & Philanthropy was to engage with great women from all walks of life,” Wrigley said later. “For me, it was also an entrée into a personal passion for supporting higher education in Arizona by investing collectively and individually in ASU.” Women & Philanthropy represented the foundation’s third community outreach initiative — joining President’s Club and Presidential Engagement Programs — and quickly established itself as a successful magnet for women to become visionary investors through a collective, significant force supporting the university.

During the organization’s first 10 years, nearly $2 million was raised in support of 61 ASU programs, including health care initiatives, research, education development, student scholarships and community outreach. The funding was put to good use — from student scholarships providing access to those who otherwise might not have attended college, to seed funding for groundbreaking research on aneurysms and breast cancer, to funding for ASU community programs reinforcing the importance of literacy and math to K–12 students.

Meanwhile, Crow’s vision extended even to the foundation’s name. The board rallied behind the university president and in 2006 made it official: the new name would be the ASU Foundation for A New American University. With the new name came a breath of new life for the foundation.

Now with a newfound momentum, coupled with a sharp focus on expanding ASU’s community of philanthropic advocates, the foundation was ready to pursue an innovative billion-dollar fundraising campaign.

But it wasn’t going to be a traditional campaign. Crow, who believed strongly that one indicator of a New American University’s success was its ability to create positive impact on a global scale, worked closely with the foundation to develop a game plan that would take ASU’s vision — and its bold message — beyond the university’s philanthropic borders.

In the past, ASU and the foundation had cultivated and relied on a generous group of fewer than 100 donors to boost the university’s programs, scholarship opportunities, research and initiatives. The working roster included the true stalwarts, the pioneers who had helped build and prepare ASU to be in position to move Crow’s vision forward and outward; there were the prominent civic leaders who helped drive higher education forward through their investments in the promise of the university. Crow and the foundation worked hard on finding a new generation of “investors” — philanthropists who would help guide ASU through the most transformative decade in the university’s history.

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On the foundation front, Johnnie Ray, who had served for three years as senior vice president for development and university relations at Emory University, joined the fundraising organization in January 2007 as the president and chief executive officer. A native of Texas, Ray brought with him a successful track record in management and leadership, including direction of the University of Texas’ “We’re Texas” capital campaign that eventually generated $1.6 billion, exceeding its original goal by a whopping $600 million. He would be responsible for bringing the ASU Foundation into alignment with President Crow’s idea of the New American University.

Within months of arriving on the Tempe campus, Ray shared his thoughts about ASU with the foundation’s board of directors, saying, “I genuinely believe that America’s large public research universities are among mankind’s greatest inventions. It is no wonder that you have chosen to devote some of your volunteer energy to ASU because its impact on quality of life in this region and beyond is so clear and expansive.

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“There is a breakthrough occurring here that will influence the very way public universities will be measured in the future — maybe not next week, or next year, but clearly within a reasonable time frame.”

Johnnie Ray is responsible for bringing the ASU Foundation into alignment with President Michael Crow’s idea of the New American University.

Ray went to work building a fully professionalized back office capacity while the foundation witnessed an influx of highly respected development leaders from recognized universities who brought new perspectives to the operation.

Personal contacts with donors and prospective donors increased.

“The vision of a New American University that President Crow laid out was very positive among our constituency of university advocates,” said Ray. “One of the most rewarding aspects of my time at the foundation was working alongside highly motivated, professionally skilled, brilliant colleagues.”

With 30 years experience in higher education, Ray brought a philosophy to the foundation that ran parallel to Crow’s way of thinking, to Crow’s focus on the advancement of ASU as a social force. He agreed that the foundation, like ASU, should not be compelled by what it lacked, but rather by what it had. Risk-taking and viewing the world as a field of possibilities, overcoming odds and pulling others into such a way of thinking, Ray believed, would expand the boundaries of ASU to confront the great challenges facing society.

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“American public higher education is just not in the right game anymore,” said Ray to a group of ASU advocates in 2009. “There is too much risk that a mistake by public leaders or even by us will be grievously damaging to long-term societal interests. We need to change the game. We need new rules that create a healthier environment for the public business of higher education.

“We need a new compact. We need a new idea and we have it right here. It exists in the form of a New American University and your presence here suggests you agree. Help us institutionalize this vision here at ASU and then help us lead a patriotic movement to spread it across the American highereducation landscape.”

Ray had called upon his audience — and supporters of higher education everywhere — to be founders of the New American University.

Meanwhile, the foundation was primed to bolster its role in the advancement of ASU. In April 2010 Bill Post, who for 38 years had served Arizona Public Service and its holding company, Pinnacle West Corporation, in a variety of leadership positions,was elected by the foundation board of directors as chair of the august group.

Post was a natural to assume the reins of the board, having held president and CEO responsibilities for APS, sitting as president of Pinnacle West and serving both companies as chairman of the board.

He was re-elected in 2012 to serve a second two-year term. Next up was the introduction of a new foundation CEO, necessitated by Ray’s departure to the University of Tennessee.

R.F. “Rick” Shangraw Jr., who took the reins as chief executive officer of the ASU Foundation in November 2011, was no stranger to the university. Prior to joining the foundation he served as ASU’s senior 184 |

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vice president for the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development and director of the Global Institute of Sustainability. He was responsible for ASU’s growing annual $350 million research portfolio, which placed ASU among the top 20 research institutions in the country without a medical school. Before joining ASU, Shangraw was the founder and CEO of Project Performance Corporation, a research and technology consulting firm specializing in environmental, energy and information management issues.

He was appointed a professor of practice with ASU’s School of Public Affairs within the College of Public Programs and the School of Sustainability in addition to l eading the foundation.

Crow was instrumental in raising ASU’s endowment fund from $100 million in 2002 to $500 million a decade later, said Shangraw, noting, “President Crow raised the reputational status of the university while simultaneously finding more people who had affinity toward the university. Probably the most important thing he did was start talking about the really big societal challenges ASU was solving. So, he went away from this concept of just ‘give to ASU because you’re an alum’ to ‘give to ASU because we are solving a lot of the world’s big problems.’

That resonated with donors.”

It was an approach that certainly resonated with philanthropist Julie Wrigley, who in 2004 made a $15 million contribution to ASU to establish the university’s groundbreaking Global Institute of Sustainability.

From that institute grew the world’s first School of Sustainability, which opened at ASU in January 2007. That same year, Wrigley made another $10 million investment in the university by bringing four of the world’s leading sustainability scholar-researchers to fill professorships focused on renewable energy systems, sustainable business practices, global environment change and complex system dynamics.

“ASU is the youngest Research I university in the country, and I saw that as a strength because administration and faculty weren’t so set in their ways as are those in some of the other universities, and I liked the fact ASU could do things other universities couldn’t or wouldn’t do,” Wrigley said at the time. “I loved that Michael Crow decided to become a leader in sustainability when no one else was thinking about it. Now, we’ve become the leader on this issue and we’re making a big difference.”

Rick Shangraw has spearheaded a sea-change in the way university foundations traditionally have done business, moving to a new model that emphasizes connecting potential philanthropists, regardless of where they graduated, with their passion at ASU.

Wrigley, along with philanthropists such as James and Jo-Ann Armstrong, Barbara and Craig Barrett, Jerry Bisgrove, Cathy and Verde Dickey, Jacquie and Bennett Dorrance, Charlene and Orin Edson, Mary Lou Fulton and Ira A. Fulton, Diane and Bruce Halle, Kax and Robert Herberger, Jeanne and Gary Herberger, Meghan and Jerome Hirsch, Stephane Janssen, Joan and David Lincoln, June Morrison, Bob and Sharon Dupont McCord, T. Denny Sanford, Kelly and Brian Swette, Diane and Gary Tooker, Melani and Rob Walton, Cynthia and Michael Watts and Connie and Craig Weatherup are recognized as university founders in a sense — those who helped propel the transformation of the university from a traditional model of higher learning to what Crow had envisioned — a new trajectory for the 21st century.

Armed with a new name, dedicated donors and a mission — to ensure the success of ASU as a New American University — the ASU Foundation was perfectly positioned to enter a new era of unparalleled support for the growing — in size, enrollment, research and international reputation — university.

ASU President Michael Crow shakes hands with broadcasting legend Walter Cronkite, who was proud of his association with the university and the journalism school named in his honor.

chapter twenty one

a golden decade

The New American University is a paradigm-shifting model for the 21st century.

It was the start of something no one dared dream. When President Michael M. Crow took office in 2002, the economy was robust; municipalities, politicians, government agencies and businesses were investing in higher education; and the former executive vice provost of Columbia University found wholehearted support from executive staff, the ASU Foundation board and community members for his vision of creating ASU as a New American University. These were transitional times, and Crow encouraged all to embrace the future and, most importantly, help to change it.

“We have a saying here at ASU that we’re fond of using,” Crow said in a 2011 interview. “Since we can’t predict the future, come to ASU and help us shape the future.”

Fulton Center was built by the ASU Foundation for A New American University in 2005 and dedicated in honor of Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton.

Fulton Center is the home of the foundation, university administration and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences administration.

Crow, the ASU planning staff and the foundation were certainly going to do their part in shaping the future by transforming the 120-year-old institution with a party school reputation into a worldrenowned premier research institution and a paradigm-shifting model for the 21st century.

“Universities have been highly bureaucratized, machine-like creatures,” he said. “They are rigid social constructs that produce limited tools, and except for the occasional breakthroughs, they are not producing the kind of radical advances we might expect.”

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“Beginning in 2002 we began setting aside $3–7 million a year for strategic investment, with the result of about 100 new projects being launched and $500 million in new investments acquired. These projects concentrated on ASU research expansion and initiatives in entrepreneurship, health transformation, sustainability and other areas.”

— ASU President Michael M. Crow

One avenue Crow created for those advances was Arizona Technology Enterprises.

Established in 2003, AzTE is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ASU Foundation with a mission to manage technology ventures from ASU and its AzTE partner, Northern Arizona University. AzTE works with universityaffiliated inventors and outside industry to transform scientific progress into products and services by mining university research, prosecuting patents, marketing inventions and negotiating licenses.

This technology transfer brought two benefits to ASU: It facilitated efforts to attract and retain superior faculty and graduates, and it returned income to inventors and the university to support ongoing research. In 2011, less than a decade after its creation, AzTE assisted faculty members in obtaining 18 patents and helped with the launch of 10 startup corporations.

While the university was tearing down and dismantling academic silos in favor of transdisciplinary cooperation among colleges and faculty and reshaping the idea of what a public university should be, it also was constructing a bold and audacious plan that would double the size of ASU in a decade.

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ASU retained Baltimore-based Ayers Saint Gross to create a master plan for the New American University. The plan showed that the Tempe campus would grow to 13.2 million square feet from about 8 million square feet, and would eventually evolve into a modern research campus focused mainly on scientific investigation and advanced study for scholars. ASU’s East campus in southeast Mesa (today’s Polytechnic campus) would be geared toward applied engineering and other professional careers, while ASU’s West campus in northwest Phoenix would focus on liberal arts, education and teaching.

The proposed downtown Phoenix campus would offer a mix of colleges and degrees in journalism, communications, nursing, health management and public administration.

Growth would be channeled away from the Tempe campus — bursting at the seams with 50,000 students — toward the other campuses. The East campus, which had a student population of about 3,600 students in 2002, would eventually grow to 15,000 students in 2012. The West campus, which had a student population of about 7,000 students, would swell to a like number, while the proposed downtown Phoenix campus, which started with 3,000 students in 2006, also would break out at 15,000 students.

Chapter Twenty One - A Golden Decade

In Tempe, the plan identified 57 buildings for demolition and 39 for preservation, including Old Main and Gammage Hall. The rest would be replaced with sleek, specially designed facilities, including labs where scientists could work on human DNA, individual molecules, water resources, sustainable growth and Mars research. The reinvigorated Tempe campus would look and feel much more urban, featuring tall glass and steel buildings and offering all the amenities students demanded, including state-of-the-art dorm housing, which would jump from 6,400 beds to 15,000 at the end of Crow’s first decade of presidency.

USA Today would write about the transformation: “If colleges were countries, most would resemble the developed nations of the West — stable, working to improve, but changing only gradually and growing slowly, if at all. Arizona State would be China. Its campuses are giant construction sites. New schools and programs spring up nearly every week. Hundreds of faculty are being hired, thousands of dorm rooms are being built. Students here never run out of choices.”

A blueprint was simply a piece of paper. The question was how and who would pay for the construction (approximately 80 capital projects), especially when the price tag was $2.25 billion.

According to Morgan R. Olsen, ASU’s executive vice president, treasurer and CFO in the Office of Business and Finance, the university took its own advice and became “very entrepreneurial” during the early Crow years.

“Because of our economy, the state was not able to invest at the level it had previously.

That’s not unique to ASU, and so that meant we were trying to figure out a new business model,” Olsen said. “Our operating budget for 2012 was just under $2 billion and only about 17 percent of that came from the state. While we were grateful to the state for its investment, there was another 83 percent we had to find from somewhere else in order to operate.”

ASU’s Polytechnic campus, located in Mesa in the heart of the growing East Valley

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Olsen said in addition to bonds, real estate investments, private partnerships, research and government grants, and new revenue streams from within the university, ASU today has become more reliant upon the foundation to bridge the gap. Of the $2.25 billion dollars earmarked for construction, $885 million came from private donations, gifts and third parties.

“The foundation exists to support the university and is critical in the mission of the university, especially in the last decade,” Olsen said in 2011. “Clearly the private fundraising was as important as it ever had been, and it was going to become even more so in the foreseeable future.”

Among the 80 capital projects, a new home was needed for both the foundation and the president’s office, which were both in need of better facilities. It seemed only natural to combine the two — an idea conceived by Grady Gammage Jr.

From a physical standpoint, the proposed six-story building would offer 46,000 square feet to the foundation and allow the nonprofit to consolidate its business operations and growing staff. Approximately 90,000 square feet would be leased to ASU, providing the university with muchneeded on-campus office space and reducing the need for off-campus leasing.

It would also contain a retail component and a 1,200-space parking structure, both of which would generate a constant stream of revenue.

It made business sense to attract and embrace philanthropic changemakers to staff and interact with the foundation on a more participatory level than ever before.

Mary Lou and Ira Fulton with ASU President Michael Crow at the March 2005 naming ceremony of the ASU Foundation building, located at 300 East University Drive in Tempe 190 |

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Known to many at the university and foundation as the “first family” of ASU, Ira and Mary Lou Fulton’s support of ASU in excess of $158 million for scholarships, colleges and initiatives, and their unwavering commitment to Crow were recognized and celebrated in the naming of the new building: the Fulton Center. The modern LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) -certified building at 300 East University Drive in Tempe opened as headquarters for the foundation and ASU’s leadership, and has become one of the signature buildings on the campus.

“This building represents the intellectual and institutional lighthouse of the university, overlooking the Tempe campus,” said foundation CEO Ira Jackson at the March 21, 2005, naming ceremony. “It holds watch over the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus soon to rise, SkySong in Scottsdale, the Polytechnic and West campuses, all symbols of the New American University — and all visible from this building.”

ASU would soon be visible across the entire, sprawling Valley.

It’s almost impossible to list, other than in bullet points, what the university, the foundation and third parties were able to construct in the span of 10 years, from 2002 through 2012. In addition to the Fulton Center and the adjoining Fulton Parking Structure, the list includes:

The Brickyard in downtown Tempe on Mill Avenue is home to the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and Decision Theater.

Tempe campus 2003 • University Services building 2004 • Lattie F. Coor Hall • Packard Drive south parking structure • Flexible Display Center • Adelphi II Commons • Brickyard on Mill Avenue • Biodesign Institute Building A 2005 • Biodesign Institute Building B • Interdisciplinary Science and Technology 2 • Decision Theater • John Spini Gymnastics Center • Riches Wrestling Complex

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Tempe campus (cont.)

2006 • Interdisciplinary Science and Technology 1 2007 • ASU Police Station • Hassayampa Academic Village 2008 • Vista Del Sol student housing 2009 • Verde Dickey Dome • Weatherup Center • Barrett Honors College Academic Complex and dining facility 2010 • Centerpoint offices 2011 • Southwestern Center for Aberration Corrected Electron Microscopy • Alameda Warehouse • Adelphi Commons 2012 • Interdisciplinary Science and Technology 4 • Health Services Building expansion and renovation • Vistas at Vista del Sol student housing • Manzanita Hall renovation • McCord Hall at W.P. Carey School of Business • Student Recreation Complex renovation • Diane and Bruce Halle Skyspace Garden

ASU SkySong in Scottsdale is home to a global business community that links technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and education to position ASU and Greater Phoenix as global leaders of the knowledge economy.

Downtown Phoenix campus 2006 • University Center Nursing and Health Innovation Building I • U.S. Post Office renovation 2007 • Arizona Biomedical Collaborative Building 2008 • Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication/KAET Channel 8 • Taylor Place student housing 2009 • A.E. England Building • Nursing and Health Innovation Building I West campus 2003 • Central Plant III • Las Casas residence complex 2004 • Classroom/Lab/Computer Classroom Building 2010 • Bookstore renovation and expansion 2012 • Verde Dining Pavilion • Casa de Oro residence complex • Sun Devil Fitness complex Polytechnic campus 2003 • University Library Archives • Greenhouse 2004 • Student Union 2005 • Interdisciplinary Science and Technology III • ABS Greenhouses 2008 • Academic Center 2012 • University Public Schools • Century Hall student housing • Citrus Dining Pavilion Other locations 2005 • Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory • Oasis apartments 2006 • Phoenix/Gateway Airport hangar 2007 • SkySong Innovation Center, Scottsdale 2009 • Skysong ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center Building 1 2012 • ASU Colleges at Lake Havasu City • Downtown YMCA land purchase

In all, the university added a staggering 11 million square feet in the 10-year span, primarily through construction and acquisition of property.

In that same time period, ASU added close to 3 million square feet and 7,000 beds to its student housing system.

It was a golden decade to be sure, but that effort was also expected to be matched in the next 10 years. The university crafted aggressive plans to build another 7–11 million square feet, which would include the new Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at the Downtown Phoenix campus, the Y @ ASU student recreation complexes (at three campus locations), a campus in Lake Havasu City (which opened for classes in 2012), the Innovation Center in Chandler, and a highly anticipated and long-overdue renovation of Sun Devil Stadium through the creation of a special district that promises retail, professional and residential accommodations.

The university’s physical transformation also meant a revolution in academics, attracting world-class faculty (three Nobel laureates and a Pulitzer Prize winner) and gilding the school’s national reputation. Today, ASU is the largest producer of college graduates in the state of Arizona. U.S. News & World Report has listed ASU as an “up-and-comer” since 2008 and hailed the university as “a place for innovation.”

The Academic Ranking of World Universities placed ASU 78th in the world and 45th in the U.S. in 2012. The university was also ranked fifth in the United States by The Wall Street Journal in 2011 for the quality of students prepared to go to work at American corporations. And in November 2012 The Chronicle of Higher Education ranked ASU in a tie for fifth place nationally with Yale University and the University of California-Berkeley for the number of Fulbright fellowship awards among research institutions, prompting The Arizona Republic to note, “As a top producer of Fulbright winners for 2012-13, ASU shows the kind of excellence and quality that burnishes its academic reputation. This helps attract and keep top students and faculty.

It’s good for Arizona.”

The Fletcher Library lawn and reflective pool are the centerpiece of the ASU West campus.

ASU SkySong entrance

The Mercado at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus is a symbolic gateway to higher education in the city’s core.

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October 2004 – Orin Edson donated $5.4 million to the ASU Foundation to fund the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative. A lifelong boater, Edson started a small company out of his garage that he built into Bayliner Marine Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of pleasure and luxury boats. The Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative provides funding, mentorship and office space to teams of ASU students within all university disciplines. Today, as many as 20 ventures are granted up to $20,000 each year.

ASU President Michael Crow and Julie Ann Wrigley unveil signage for Wrigley Hall and the Global Institute of Sustainability. Wrigley made a $15 million contribution to Arizona State University to establish the institute, which led to the creation of the world’s first School of Sustainability in 2007. Wrigley later invested $10 million in ASU to recruit four of the world’s leading sustainability scholar-researchers.

A short list of investments made by philanthropists in support of the vision of a New American University is evidence of the foundation’s role in the academic revolution at ASU: March 2003 – Ira and Mary Lou Fulton presented the ASU Foundation with $58 million for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Mary Lou Fulton Teacher’s College and to launch ASU’s Decision Theater. The region’s only interactive, three-dimensional institute allows civic leaders to engage in visualizing the effects of public choices on issues ranging from water and air quality to transportation and land use.

April 2003 – William Polk Carey, chairman of New York-based investment firm W. P. Carey & Co., announced a $50 million gift to ASU. The gift, which endowed the W. P. Carey School of Business, was the second-largest single donation to any U.S. business school at the time.

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December 2004 – Philanthropist Julie Wrigley made a $15 million contribution to the ASU Foundation to establish the university’s Global Institute of Sustainability. The founding gift helped ASU join Harvard, Columbia and Stanford universities and a handful of other institutions around the world as a leader in the important and emerging field of sustainability.

December 2005 – The Fultons became the university’s largest single donors. Investing an additional $100-plus million, their generous gifts endowed the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and helped to launch ASU’s Decision Theater.

May 2006 – ASU President Michael M. Crow awarded the university’s first-ever Medal of Excellence to Jerry Bisgrove. Bisgrove was recognized for his work and investments that funded ASU’s establishment of the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family, which was instrumental in the success of the Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management. Bisgrove’s advocacy of ASU also led to the creation of the Stardust Fellowship Program, which allows undergraduate students to develop leadership skills tailored to managing nonprofits.

June 2007 – Craig and Connie Weatherup’s $5 million gift helped create the 30,000-squarefoot Weatherup Center, a state-of-the-art indoor practice facility and training center for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. The center boasts two full-size basketball courts, locker rooms, offices, team meeting areas, study areas and audio-visual support.

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January 2008 – Donors Brian and Kelly Swette made a $10 million commitment to ASU to fund seed investments in research areas that push the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. Among the areas of research impacted by the Swette gift through ASU’s Intellectual Fusion Investment Fund are the advancement of alternative fuels, child development, the evolution of human traits and phenomena over long periods of time, and sustainable technologies.

March 2008 – ASU’s Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management became the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation, honoring a $5 million investment by the Phoenix-based Lodestar Foundation. The Lodestar Foundation is one of a few grant-making organizations that focus on process rather than on fields of interest, encouraging nonprofits to utilize efficient business practices in their operations.

May 2008 – Businessman and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford approached President Crow with a $10 million gift and an idea for improving relationships between men and women. A partnership was created with the ASU School of Social and Family Dynamics to design a program based on the premise that early experiences lay the foundation for harmonious relationships in the future. The end result was the Sanford Harmony Program, which provides girls and boys with opportunities and support for positive peer classroom interactions and friendships, laying the foundation for healthy and successful relationships throughout the early childhood years and beyond.

January 2010 – Sanford gifted an additional $18 million to ASU to improve public education. The fiveyear investment enabled the creation of ASU’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership Summer Institute, which helps future teachers make effective lesson plans, evaluate their teaching and understand what to expect when they enter a classroom.

June 2010 – Julie Wrigley provided an additional $10 million investment in ASU to recruit four of the world’s leading sustainability scholar-researchers focused on renewable energy systems, sustainable business practices, global environmental change and complex systems dynamics.

“I am a pioneer of new ideas, new thoughts and new programs,” says ASU advocate and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford. “Arizona State University gave me the opportunity to bring forth the Sanford Harmony Program and now the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. These programs benefit the country by teaching children respect, trust and understanding.”

April 2011 – The Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy was launched at the West campus as a result of a $20 million gift from Gary K. and Jeanne Herberger.

The school is designed to meet the educational, social and emotional needs of gifted middleschool students.

January 2012 – The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust established a $10 million strategic investment fund at Arizona State University to improve various aspects of health care delivery, including education, research and clinical practice through better use of data. The initiative connects science to health care practice in a more direct manner and will implement a cross-university effort to improve health outcomes.

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March 2012 – Rob and Melani Walton donated $27.5 million to ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability to develop the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions fund. The fund supports the deployment of solutions to sustainability challenges involving energy, water, environment, climate, urbanization and social transformation over the course of five years.

October 2012 – ASU dedicated a James Turrell skyspace on the Tempe campus, a public art space recognizing the contributions of philanthropists Bruce and Diane Halle. The Scottsdale couple’s 15 years of active involvement with ASU include funding for a fiveyear study to better understand and address Arizona’s high school dropout crisis and support for the work of the former Cancer Research Institute at ASU and TGen. In 2010 their philanthropy led to the establishment of the Diane Halle Center for Family Justice at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The Turrell Skyspace at ASU was initiated and partially funded by the Future Arts Research Institute @ ASU, a groundbreaking program established by the Halles to advance an interdisciplinary approach to the arts in Arizona.

ASU President Michael M. Crow (left) says the generous commitment of Melani and Rob Walton has been integral in helping the university realize its sustainability vision.

Diane and Bruce Halle are among a growing number of higher education philanthropists who are advancing ASU’s vision of a New American University.

October 2012 – ASU broke ground on the construction of McCord Hall, adjacent to the W. P. Carey School of Business BA and BAC buildings. Featuring state-of-theart classrooms, lecture halls and break-out rooms, the technologically advanced facility recognizes the contributions of Sharon Dupont McCord and her late husband Bob, who in 2008 established a $12 million endowment to promote sustainability initiatives and other research at ASU through the university’s Intellectual Fusion Investment Fund.

Rendering of McCord Hall

Verde Dickey (pictured) and wife Cathy are among the university’s most passionate advocates, providing time, treasure and talent across ASU’s four campuses and boosting the nationally acclaimed Sun Devil Marching Band — the Pride of the Southwest.

Time magazine paid tribute in 2008 to President Crow as one of the 10 best university presidents for his role in reshaping Arizona State University, and making the public university viable, competitive and relevant again.

“Arizona State has long owned a spot in rankings of American party schools; but on Crow’s watch, the university is clambering up another kind of list,” wrote Time. “He rode into office in 2002 vowing to build a New American University that embraced students with a wide range of backgrounds and abilities while giving elite public schools a run for their research money.

“During his tenure the university has more than doubled its yearly research spending, boosted its roster of National Merit Scholars 61 percent and claimed a spot on three separate rankings of America’s best colleges.”

The ASU Foundation for A New American University, which was accustomed to operating outside the spotlight, was recognized by Charity Navigator with its premier four-star rating in 2012. Specifically, the foundation was lauded for its growth in philanthropic investments received during the 2011 fiscal year as well as its fundraising efficiency.

During the 2012 fiscal year, more than 94,000 donors committed to approximately $172 million in support of ASU scholarships, research, colleges and programs. In the next decade, ASU, the foundation and their many partners and advocates hope to raise $1 billion through an ambitious drive labeled “Solutions@ASU.” Universities in the 21st century have an urgent obligation to recognize, identify and solve society’s most pressing challenges — local, regional, national and global issues in education, health care delivery, sustainability, social justice and human rights and more. Solutions@ASU is the embodiment of Arizona State University’s deep commitment to use-inspired research aimed at meaningful discovery and solving the greatest challenges of our time.

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Chapter Twenty One - A Golden Decade

“Our prerogative is to be of maximum service and impact,” said Crow in 2012, the 10th year of his presidency. “We must produce people who can learn anything and generate solutions to global, evolving issues.”

Through the strength of ASU’s human capital and transdisciplinary capacity, five areas of investigation and problem solving characterize Solutions@ASU:

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New health – Bench to bedside, the goal is to enhance quality of life across the broadest cross section of society through evidence-based patient care.

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New teacher/new learner – Education innovators at ASU are preparing for a future in which teacher roles are recast, distance is overcome and technology opens up new vistas of possibility.

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New city – Seventy percent of the world’s population soon will be living in urbanized conditions. Accordingly, ASU is positioned to develop the science, technology and political will to advance alternative energy sources; ensure access to fresh water; and create a sustainable, vibrant city that serves as a global model.

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Better designs/better decisions – The goal is to expand the university’s conceptualization for broader knowledge and understanding of interdisciplinary relationships and complexity, and to generate a deeper, more thoughtful address of the topics at hand.

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University as enterprise – The very definition of an enterprise includes innovation, creativity and a willingness to fail in service of a great mission. ASU is now designed as a bold enterprise and scaled to spur development and economic progress, producing goods and services and human capital. ASU will be the model, promoting excellence, access and impact by assuming responsibility for the future.

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That future means utilizing students of every measure and discipline to serve as extensions of the ASU Foundation, reaching into the community and giving back, making use of not only their personal growth but the growth of the university and the supporting community.

The foundation has been a powerful engine of progress, propelling ASU to new levels of achievement for five decades and even longer when considering its humble 19th-century roots. Few could foresee how important the foundation would be, just as few could predict the physical and academic growth of the university.

Once upon a time, the foundation labored in virtual obscurity, little-known to the Arizona community or even the university itself. Today it is a vital force, supporting and interacting with the university in hundreds of meaningful and transformative ways. Even more important, it has transformed community leaders from mildly interested observers of ASU progress into enthusiastic partners, builders and passionate advocates of the university.

“Almost all public universities had a late start because for more than a century the model has been state support and student tuition, which meant there really wasn’t a need for private philanthropy until recently,” said foundation CEO Shangraw. “The interesting thing about the foundation is that we got started in 1955 and we’re one of the oldest nonprofits in Arizona. The foundation today has a solid base with a half-billion dollars in our endowment. It has become the place where leaders of the community interact with the university and come to give it their support.”

And this is only the beginning.

The ASU Foundation for A New American University has embarked on a new and exciting course, involving its board members in university affairs as never before. Corporate officers, political leaders, Arizonans of means, alumni and many others have come to realize that the economic future and the quality of life of their community is heavily dependent on having a great university as a neighbor and an economic engine.

The future of the foundation looks bright. The dream of a billion-dollar enterprise, building ASU while providing broadened opportunities for university faculty and students, is advancing at breathtaking speed.

With the donation of a portion of his cow pasture in 1885, Tempe butcher George Washington Wilson couldn’t have imagined where his philanthropy would lead and what would grow from his largesse. It would propel a legislature’s pen stroke from a promise into one of the country’s largest public universities; into an institution with big, bold ideas; into a place where access to higher education is a focus; and into a place that takes responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities around it. From modest beginnings the ASU Foundation has found its stride, reflecting or propelling every giant step forward in the advancement of ASU. In fact, the foundation mission is that simple: to ensure the success of ASU as a New American University.

As The Arizona Republic noted in 2012, “That’s good for Arizona.”

acknowledgments This book and the documentation of the history of the ASU Foundation for A New American University would not have been possible without the professional assistance of many people committed to the advancement of Arizona State University.

Authors:

Dean Smith Marshall Terrill, ASU Public Affairs, Downtown Phoenix campus

Research:

Robert Spindler, archivist, ASU Department of Archives and Special Collections at ASU Libraries

Research assistance:

Steve Des Georges, senior director, editorial services, ASU Foundation

Design:

Jillian Ioerger for Ioerger Creative

Creative direction:

Scott Curtis, senior creative director communications and marketing, ASU Foundation

Production:

Rey Verdugo, production designer communications and marketing, ASU Foundation

Project manager:

Lee Oliver, project manager, communications and marketing, ASU Foundation

Editorial advisor:

Ann Toca, senior vice president communications and marketing, ASU Foundation

Editor in chief:

Steve Des Georges, senior director, editorial services, ASU Foundation

Editors:

Erik Ketcherside, communications manager, editorial services, ASU Foundation Melissa Bordow, communications specialist, editorial services, ASU Foundation Lindsay Ivins, student communications assistant, editorial services, ASU Foundation

Special thanks to Rochelle “Rocky” Mackey.

Proudly printed by ASU students at the ASU Print & Imaging Lab. ASU Foundation for A New American University

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photo credit Special thanks are extended to Robert Spindler, university archivist and head of the Department of Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University Libraries, and his staff for enabling the use of the majority of the photographs featured in this book.

about the authors Dean Smith

Dean Smith was an ASU alumnus — he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees on the Tempe campus — and a prolific writer, historian and author. He was an Arizonan for more than seven decades, was ASU’s director of public relations for 27 years and an eyewitness to the greatest transitional period in the state’s history.

He was a frequent contributor to Arizona Highways magazine, a book editor for the University of Arizona Press and a sportswriter for The Arizona Republic and the Mesa Tribune. Smith wrote 23 books, many detailing the history of Arizona. They include “The Sun Devils: Eight Decades of Arizona State Football,” “Tempe: Arizona Crossroads,” “Barry Goldwater: The Biography of a Conservative,” “Grady Gammage: ASU’s Man of Vision,” and “Arizona Nuggets.” Smith died on July 7, 2012 at the age of 89. This book is his final work.

Marshall Terrill Marshall Terrill contributed the final two chapters of this book following the passing of Dean Smith. Terrill works for the Office of Public Affairs at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus. He is a veteran film, sports and music writer and the author of 15 books, including best-selling biographies on Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley and Pete Maravich. In 2011, Terrill authored his first book on ASU, “Downtown Phoenix Campus: The First Five Years.” He resides in Tempe, Ariz.

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WRITTEN BY DEAN SMITH & MARSHALL TERRILL