John Patrick Crecine
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John Patrick Crecine (Pat) (born August 22, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan) 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 at Carnegie Mellon University. He also spent a year at the Stanford University School of Business.
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[edit] Academic career
[edit] 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.
[edit] Carnegie Mellon
In 1975, he became dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon and Professor of Political Economy in the School of Urban and Public Affairs. As Dean he conceived of and implemented a core curriculum, described by the Education Editor of the New York Times as "the most innovative in America," and added departments of Statistics, Social and Decision Sciences, Philosophy, and several research centers in the cognitive sciences, design, and computational linguistics to the College. Following a year as Visiting Fellow Commoner at Cambridge University, he was appointed Senior Vice President and Provost in 1983 and oversaw Carnegie Mellon's academic, research, and systems development in computing and computer science and initiated the formation of the School of Computational Sciences (which became the second such college in the country). He was also the founding chief executive officer of the Inter-university Consortium for Educational Computing, an association of research universities. In 1986, he was the first chief administrative officer and oversaw the founding of the University Athletic Association, a NCAA Division III Conference.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Minorities
During Dr. 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.
[edit] Athletics
During Dr. 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Olympics
In November of 1987, Dr. Crecine, acting on behalf of Georgia Tech, volunteered to help Atlanta become the host city for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games and was an active member of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games before and after Atlanta was chosen as host for the Centennial Games (from 1988 to 1996). Dr. Crecine conceived of and arranged funding for the development of a computerized, virtual reality model of the competition, living, and support facilities to be constructed in support of the Centennial Games as part of Atlanta’s bid package.[citation needed] Georgia Tech was the Olympic Village during the Centennial Games (on campus housing more than doubled, student athletic and recreational facilities more than doubled) and Georgia Tech hosted the boxing, swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, and water polo competitions.
[edit] Post-academic career
Dr. Crecine’s resignation as President of Georgia Tech took effect in July of 1994. Dr. Crecine has been associated with several start-up companies involved in Information Technology, ecommerce, and the internet and is currently CEO of B.P.T., Inc. a consulting firm. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of several public companies: Intermet Corporation (1993-2005), Web.com (formerly Interland Corporation, 2003-present), Liebert Corporation (1982-1987), 796 (Pittsburgh Baseball Club Ownership Group, 1982-87), NeXT Computers, Inc. (1987-1990), HBOC, Inc. (1992-1998), Total eMed (1999-2000), and numerous non-profit and charitable organizations.
| Preceded by: Joseph M. Pettit |
President of the Georgia Institute of Technology 1987–1994 |
Succeeded by: G. Wayne Clough |
