State of the university: from the president's mouth
Frankie Guros
Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: Opinion
The day before Phil Creighton, president of Pacific University, was scheduled to give his annual State of the University address, I had scheduled a meeting to get a preview of what subjects he would be covering.
We discussed some current issues too, such as branding and the ongoing sidewalk chalk war. And somewhere along the lines, he strongly encouraged me to attend the address, which I ended up missing due to fall baseball practice.
If only I had caught his subtle tone.
The bombshell he dropped on me and the rest of the university, of course, was his announcement that he will be retiring as our president at the end of the current school year.
It would have been hard to find someone as surprised as me that night when one of my reporters called me and filled me in on the breaking news. I had just spent a half hour speaking with Creighton, and I was under no impression that this was a man on his way out.
Instead, I got the opposite impression.
Anyone who has been at Pacific the last four years has witnessed the physical changes our campus has undergone while under Creighton's reign. And talking to faculty members who have experienced life under previous presidents, it is apparent Creighton will be leaving Pacific with no enemies, something his predecessors failed to do.
Creighton outlined the new capital campaign for me, which will include a badly-needed University Center renovation, a sciences complex, a new home for optometry in Hillsboro, leading to a renovation of Jefferson Hall for the social sciences and a replacement for Warner Hall, which has been around since the end of World War II.
He told me he would be suggesting that Pacific should bring back football. According to Creighton, we've raised about two-thirds of the $1.2 million start-up costs.
More importantly, he reminded me that a lot has changed since we changed memberships from the National Assocation of Intercollegiate Athletics to the National Collegiate Athletic Assocation, Division III.
We discussed some current issues too, such as branding and the ongoing sidewalk chalk war. And somewhere along the lines, he strongly encouraged me to attend the address, which I ended up missing due to fall baseball practice.
If only I had caught his subtle tone.
The bombshell he dropped on me and the rest of the university, of course, was his announcement that he will be retiring as our president at the end of the current school year.
It would have been hard to find someone as surprised as me that night when one of my reporters called me and filled me in on the breaking news. I had just spent a half hour speaking with Creighton, and I was under no impression that this was a man on his way out.
Instead, I got the opposite impression.
Anyone who has been at Pacific the last four years has witnessed the physical changes our campus has undergone while under Creighton's reign. And talking to faculty members who have experienced life under previous presidents, it is apparent Creighton will be leaving Pacific with no enemies, something his predecessors failed to do.
Creighton outlined the new capital campaign for me, which will include a badly-needed University Center renovation, a sciences complex, a new home for optometry in Hillsboro, leading to a renovation of Jefferson Hall for the social sciences and a replacement for Warner Hall, which has been around since the end of World War II.
He told me he would be suggesting that Pacific should bring back football. According to Creighton, we've raised about two-thirds of the $1.2 million start-up costs.
More importantly, he reminded me that a lot has changed since we changed memberships from the National Assocation of Intercollegiate Athletics to the National Collegiate Athletic Assocation, Division III.
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