John Patrick Crecine

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John Patrick Crecine : biography

August 22, 1939 – April 28, 2008

John Patrick "Pat" Crecine (August 22, 1939 – April 28, 2008) was an American educator. After receiving his early education in Lansing, Michigan, Michigan public schools, he earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial management, and master’s and doctoral degrees in industrial administration from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now called Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University. He also spent a year at the Stanford University School of Business.

Michigan

Dr. Crecine’s academic career began at the University of Michigan, where he established the country’s first graduate program in public policy in 1968 as the first Director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies, IPPS, (now the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy), while also holding academic appointments in political science and sociology. While at Michigan, Crecine established a joint Law and Public Policy program with the Michigan Law School and joint Ph.D. programs with Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Urban and Regional Planning, and Industrial Engineering, each of which were represented in the core curriculum of the IPPS Masters Program.

While at Michigan, he interrupted his teaching several times to serve the federal government as an economist, statistician, and consultant, and to work as an economist with the RAND Corporation. He earned tenure in 1968 and full professorships in Political Science and Sociology in 1970.

Georgia Tech

In 1987, Dr. Crecine became the ninth president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Dr. Crecine held a joint appointment as tenured professor in the new School of International Affairs, and the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. During his tenure, he initiated the establishment of three new colleges at Tech: the College of Computing (the first such college in the country); the Ivan Allen College of Management, Policy, and International Affairs; and the College of Sciences. He also served as Chairman of the Georgia Tech Athletic Association and as President of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. During his tenure as President, the College of Engineering’s ranking climbed from 14th to 9th in the country, the institution was transformed from a specialized institution to a top-30 national university, SAT scores of Fall entering freshmen for 1992, 1993, and 1994 rose to become the highest of any public research university in the U.S., graduation rates increased by nearly 12 percent, student facilities and housing (including those under construction) were doubled from those of the previous 102 years of the institution’s existence, and sponsored research awards more than doubled.

Minorities

During Crecine’s tenure at Georgia Tech, African American student enrollment doubled at undergraduate and graduate levels, academic performance at the undergraduate level significantly exceeded majority student performance, with approximately 40% of freshman African American students making the Dean’s list, with most African Amecian students enrolling in demanding engineering programs. Graduate Ph.D. production for minority students in engineering now approached that of the rest of the nation, combined. Numbers of tenure-track minority faculty tripled and female faculty doubled.

Athletics

During Crecine’s tenure and under Athletic Director Homer Rice’s leadership, Georgia Tech’s intercollegiate athletic programs thrived with the football team winning the NCAA national championship in 1990, the basketball team going to the NCAA "Final Four" in 1990 along with several ACC championships, and the baseball team going to the 1994 College World Series. During Dr. Crecine’s tenure, Georgia Tech student-athletes had roughly the same graduation rates as other Georgia Tech students.

Development of the Internet

During 1989-92, he chaired the Office of Technology Assessment’s Networking and High Performance Computing Panel, which led to the National Research and Education Network Act (the "Gore Bill") and the establishment of the first publicly deployed Internet.