Yates receives Founders Day Medal at CSU

FORT COLLINS — Albert Yates, former Colorado State University president, has received the Founders Day Medal as CSU celebrated its 149th birthday on Feb. 11.

Yates was the 12th president of CSU. The Founders Day Medal, first given in 2010, recognizes people for their contributions to the university and the world. Founders Day was created to celebrate the day CSU was established as Colorado’s land-grant institution in 1870.

“Al Yates is certainly one of the greatest leaders in Colorado State University history — a president who used his tenure and influence to truly transform the institution in positive and lasting ways,” CSU president Tony Frank said in a press release. “As a leader, a role model and a champion for excellence, his impact continues to resonate and inspire. He, Ann, and their family welcomed the CSU community into their home and hearts and helped all of us begin to view the potential of this university in a different light. That vision and example set the stage for CSU’s impressive trajectory over the past two decades.”

“This has great personal meaning to me,” Yates said of receiving the Founders Day Medal. “The medal suggests that during my presidency, we — faculty, staff and students — were able to create structures, inculcate values, set priorities and promote operating approaches that have endured and become foundational. My hope, and now perhaps dream fulfilled, has always been that my time at the university contributed to a culture that strongly values people and the unflinching pursuit of excellence.”

Yates became CSU president in 1990 and held the position until 2003. CSU historian James Hansen, in his book, “Democracy’s University,” noted: “Albert Yates became president at a time when CSU urgently needed continuity of leadership … (His) arrival coincided with the end of the Cold War and the full unleashing of the Information Age technology. The Human Genome Project, personal access to the World Wide Web, and the emergence of a truly global economy all occurred while he was president.” In response to this dramatic societal change, Hansen wrote, “Yates brought to CSU a true vision of education leadership.”

Yates’ tenure included the 1997 flood that devastated much of campus, the 1994 Hourglass Fire at the Mountain Campus, the Columbine High School shootings that impacted many current and incoming CSU students, and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Things like the fire and the flood of 1997 showed the collaboration, camaraderie and resilience of the community,” Yates said. “We tried to capitalize on the idea that in times of adversity, cynicism, dissent and lack of cooperation are in retreat. During such times, we sought success in turning the University into a coherent, unified community — faculty, students and staff — pursuing excellence in all we chose to do.”

He was also a champion of student success and diversity efforts, creating the President’s Multicultural Student Advisory Committee and the President’s Commission on Women and Gender Equity.

“We did not embrace the idea that students of color would be isolated from other students,” Yates said. “We didn’t want to create black or Hispanic houses on the edge of campus; we wanted to ensure that the experience of all students was the same. Our role as an institution is to do all we can to make the resources of the University available to all who can succeed here.”

Yates is also credited with helping CSU reconnect to the agricultural community, and fulfilling the institution’s land-grant mission of serving the entirety of Colorado.

“It meant extending ourselves to all parts of the state, and ensuring that all of our colleges were available to the industries they were designed to support,” he said.

At the Feb. 11 ceremony, Frank acknowledged that many in his administration, including himself, were recruited and promoted by Yates.

“His blood runs through the veins of this administration, and we’re proud of that,” he said.

Yates earned his Ph.D. in theoretical chemical physics from Indiana University at Bloomington. After postdoctoral work at the University of Southern California, he returned to Indiana University to join the faculty of the Department of Chemistry. In 1977, he was named vice president and university dean for graduate studies and research at the University of Cincinnati. Yates served for nine years as executive vice president and provost at Washington State University immediately preceding his position at CSU.

Yates was born in Memphis, Tenn., in 1942. The third child of John and Sadie Yates, he left Tennessee after high school to enlist in the U.S. Navy, where he served on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. He returned home to graduate magna cum laude from the University of Memphis with degrees in chemistry and mathematics before pursuing his advanced degrees at Indiana. He and his wife, Ann, have two children, Aerin and Sadie; he is also the father of two older children, Steven and Stephanie.

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