By james art Last time we started celebrating the 150th birthday of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Sports are crucial to this story. The varsity football team, the Sagebrushers, began play in 1896. Three people associated with the football program are in the College Football Hall of Fame: Buck Shaw, who coached several teams … Frank Hawkins, a running back who grew in Las Vegas, who went on to an NFL career with the Oakland Raiders … and Chris Ault, a longtime coach and athletic director. One player is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Marion Motley, who played offense and defense at Nevada in the 1940s and then with the Cleveland Browns, and one of the first two African-Americans to play pro football. Ault’s legendary 2010 team, featuring quarterback Colin Kaepernick, went 13 and 1 to win the school’s first game against a top-10 team, Boise State. Some of the university’s star athletes include Nate Burleson, now anchor of CBS Mornings and The NFL Today, and legendary golfer Patty Sheehan.
UNR had important leaders and sometimes they were controversial. In the early 1950s, President Minard Stout forced the dismissal of several faculty members, leading to the resignation of their most prominent professor, Walter Van Tilburg Clark. After Stout left, Charles
Armstrong calmed things down while also building the Getchell Library and helping start the University of Nevada Press, whose first director was reporter, writer and university official Robert Laxalt, author of Sweet Promised Land and a shelf of novels and short stories about Basque culture. N. Ed Miller succeeded Armstrong and led the school through the protests of the late 1960s. He was so willing to listen and work with students that there was a demonstration on campus IN HIS HONOR.
The longest-serving president is Joe Crowley, a political scientist who served for 22 years. This gave him time to make many important changes, including establishing a fund-raising foundation, making the medical school public, and founding the Reynolds School of Journalism. The new student union will be named after him and he will be an important figure in higher education and nationally.
Today, the school is part of the Nevada system of higher education. In 1951, the University of Nevada Southern Regional opened at Las Vegas High School, and today it is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The system also includes Nevada State University at Henderson, state and community colleges, and the Desert Research Institute. The University of Nevada, Reno’s fall enrollment a year ago was nearly 22,000 students. It’s come a long way.
The current president is Brian Sandoval, and he is promoting dual enrollment, a merger with Sierra Nevada University, and affiliation with the Guinn Center think tank. It is named after a former governor, Sandoval.
As am I. And I’m an alumnus of the university and I’m proud, with a statue of me up there. My college years did a lot to shape me. I was running for student body president and my campaign advisors told me it would help my campaign if I took Kappa Alpha Theta to the Comstock Stomp dance. I ended up with Bonnie Fairchild and that led to 57 years of marriage and three children. When it comes to the University of Nevada, Reno, I have a lot to be thankful for. On your 150th birthday, so do we all.