“I’m a quieter man or woman,” Dr. Crew, the new president of Medgar Evers University in central Brooklyn, explained not too long ago in excess of breakfast. “I don’t necessarily require all of the hoopla and fanfare that came with coming here in ’95.”
If hoopla and fanfare had been a waterfall, the 1 that accompanied Dr. Crew in 1995 competent as Niagara.
He arrived in New York City to run the public colleges, with just about absolutely everyone wondering how he would get along with the other Rudy, the a single in charge of City Hall, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Would they hit it off? Or would Dr. Crew grow to be, as he put it, “another chancellor going to be run out of Dodge” by a my-way-or-the-highway mayor?
For a even though, the two Rudys fared splendidly, sharing drinks and cigars. Then came the crash. The mayor Rudy avidly supported college vouchers. The chancellor Rudy identified them an unwelcome diversion of public income. The split grew bitter, then irreparable. Just just before Christmas 1999, Dr. Crew was sent packing.
It would not be his only brush with controversy. Soon after leaving New York, he was the colleges superintendent in Miami, from 2004 to 2008 there, he had successes but also rocky moments. Most just lately, he was Oregon’s chief education officer, a tour of duty that ended unhappily all about. Oregonians jeered when he left them barely a yr into the occupation. Some there also accused him of getting been far also fond of expense-account living.
“I know, I know,” Dr. Crew said wearily when we pointed out his issues with steering clear of quarrels. No question, he acknowledged, “Oregon was a undesirable match.”
Now, at 63, he is in Brooklyn. This time, “there’s merely a quiet narrative,” he explained. “The drumbeat and suspicion and expectation and so forth are considerably more sublimated.”
Not that he will be fear-free of charge at Medgar Evers, a predominantly black 4-yr college in the City University of New York system. It is a college in which only about 10 percent of students graduate in four years about forty % graduate in six. Approximately 10 % of the six,500 undergraduates are former prison inmates, whose climb to a degree is no doubt steeper than it is for most men and women. About 70 percent of the students are ladies, a statistic well worth noting since, Dr. Crew said, it is an indicator of the perilous state of many younger African-American guys.
“This university really represents the intersection of chance and challenge,” he mentioned.
We invited Dr. Crew to a meal to get a sense of his strategies for Medgar Evers, named for the civil rights activist murdered in Mississippi 50 many years in the past. He recommended breakfast at Balboa, a Caribbean-American restaurant on Bedford Avenue, across from the college’s primary building.
He ordered oatmeal, and sprinkled Splenda on it, only to uncover belatedly that it had come previously sugared. Too sweet. He switched to egg whites and total wheat toast. His tablemate chose scrambled eggs with grilled tilapia and white toast. The two had coffee.
They sat at a table by the front window, with Dr. Crew dealing with the street. When men and women passing by recognized him and waved, he interrupted the conversation to wave back and say hi by way of the window.
The initial time, he named out: “How you doin’, man? Wonderful to see you, brother.”
“You know him?” his interviewer asked.
“I have not one clue,” he replied. “People know me. A whole lot of them were mother and father when I was chancellor.”
As may well be anticipated, his ambitions incorporate rising enrollment with programs to entice candidates and improving the on-time-graduation charge. Constructing a real campus by closing a surrounding street or two to traffic is also on the agenda. (Excellent luck with that. Automobile owners nonetheless have political muscle in this city.)
Sounding like a person who has not fully jettisoned the spirit of a schools chancellor, Dr. Crew talked about “creating a pipeline” that would connect neighborhoods like Crown Heights to this university in their midst. By that he meant engaging youthful people prolonged just before they reach university age, to instill in them a wish for studying and — no modest matter — a self-confidence that they can discover.
“If you get it proper on the front finish,” he stated, “I do feel that you will see them keep for the duration.” It is a point, he mentioned, that he has sought to drive property in meetings with mother and father, regional politicians, teachers, principals and even pastors.
Why attain out to the clergy?
Breaking Bread: Back in New York With the Same Passion, but to Less Fire and Smoke
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