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Michael Crow
President of ASU

From his office overlooking Arizona State University’s campus, Dr. Michael Crow, ASU’s president, is usually busy handling some of the major business of Arizona’s largest university.

“It’s everything from academic matters, to real-estate matters, to financial matters, to political. It’s all that stuff,” he says. “Lots of meetings. Lots of discussions.”

Six years ago, Dr. Crow came to become president of ASU from Columbia University, where he served as that prestigious college’s executive vice provost. He says the decision to come to Arizona was an easy one.

“Arizona really is a place where ideas will be measured on their merit, and if they’re good, people will get behind them,” he says. “For me it was the most exciting place in the whole country, where you can make new ideas happen.”

The sheer size of ASU, and the many ambitions Dr. Crow has for improving all aspects of the student experience, make him a very busy man. The Open Door Policy crew waited two months to squeeze 20 minutes out of Crow’s tight schedule.

Dr. Crow’s hard work appears to be paying off. Since taking his post in 2002, ASU has experienced substantial campus growth, higher enrollment rates and many new academic programs, all of them among Crow’s overall vision for the college’s future.

“I think our goal is very specific,” he says. “We are going to be the greatest public university ever built.”

By Shanna Hogan

1. Art on display from ASU’s collection.
2. Piles of categorized paperwork. One pile is magazines Crow intends to read, while another consists of books he plans to send to others. The third pile is of books and magazines he has yet to decide what to do with.
3. Crow has at least four clocks in his office. “I have a lot of clocks around because sometimes it’s kind of like a psychologist’s office – you constantly have to know how much time is left with this ‘patient.’”
4. Awards and memorabilia. “Some of that stuff is from visitors that come from China or other places. I never know what to do with that stuff, and someone said I probably shouldn’t throw it away.”
5. Photos of Crow’s wife and three children.
6. Antique pin from the 1958 proposition vote that made ASU a public university. “It helps inspire me that this is a people’s university, voted in by the people. It’s probably the only one in the country.”
7. Letterhead. “Most notes I send out are handwritten. So these are different piles of paper I have, depending on the size of the note.”

8. Military coins given to Crow by officers with whom he’s met. “They say if I take this coin into the officers’ club or somewhere I can get a free drink or something. I don’t even drink.”
9. Indian blanket given to Crow when the Fulton Center was dedicated in a traditional Navajo ceremony in 2005.
10. Running shoes. Crow likes to mountain bike and hike, even during the hot summer months. Recently he started working out with the “jocks” in the athletic department gym. “They just got me a locker over there so I’m not going to be so fat, hopefully, in the future.”
11. Crystal lion given to Crow when he left Columbia University, the college where he worked for 11 years before coming to ASU.
12. Hundreds of books line Crow’s office bookshelves. “I haven’t read all of them. I’ve looked over all of them. I have more books than this. I probably have 10 times as many books at home.”