Every day during the summer of 2003, when Adam Deitch '05 worked at the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, Frank Newman '47 asked him how he was.
No matter his response, Newman replied, "Today's a great day," Deitch said.
And whenever Deitch or anyone asked Newman how he was, he would say, "I'm fantastic!"
"(Newman) consistently had a positive attitude, which rubbed off on us all," said Deitch, who is one of countless students, faculty and staff Newman worked with during his seven years at Brown and long career in higher education before then.
Newman - a dedicated civic leader, longtime leader in higher education, idol, friend and member of many boards and committees at Brown - died of melanoma May 29 at the age of 77.
At Brown, Newman was a professor, Corporation member, Campus Compact founding member and head of the Futures Project, and he served on the Board of Trustees.
His work at Brown and his contributions to the world of higher education were an inspiration to many. Newman wanted higher education to train the next generation of active citizens, according to Campus Compact Executive Director Elizabeth Hollander. Campus Compact is a national organization based at Brown that boasts more than 800 college presidents who work together to promote civic engagement on their campuses.
Before coming to work at Brown, Newman was the president of the University of Rhode Island from 1974 to 1983 and president of the Education Commission of the States from 1985 to 1999. Through his work with ECS, he collaborated with state governors - including former President Bill Clinton - on a wide range of issues including brain research, at-risk youth, teacher quality and educational reform. Clinton was a close friend of Newman's.
According to an obituary that ran in the New York Times, Newman graduated early from high school so that he could enlist in the U.S. Navy on his 17th birthday. When World War II ended, Newman came to Brown to earn a degree in electrical engineering. He earned his master's degree at Columbia University in 1974 and later earned a Ph.D. at Stanford University.
As a Corporation member, Newman went above and beyond the call of duty, said Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Kathryn Spoehr. Usually members of the Corporation attend the standard three meetings a year, Spoehr said, but "Frank did real work."
"He had a committee and a task force on information technology," which worked to make Brown's teaching more technologically advanced, she said.
With the advent of online colleges, Newman felt that "current institutions can't keep teaching the same way they did in 1875 - he told us for starters we better have a WebCT," Spoehr said.
Newman believed institutions need to think about the role they play in providing education to increasingly large numbers of people, Spoehr said. "He thought institutions need to work to retain what is vital to America, and not think in terms of doing what they always did," Spoehr said. Newman thought institutions need to become more flexible and innovative, she said.
Newman also saw market forces begin to push higher education in a direction that he thought would negatively impact the United States, Spoehr said. "He saw that institutions were trying to become more like Harvard in their selectivity and research orientation," she said.
Because state universities receive less money than private ones, they must go to outside businesses to pay for their research, she said. "To Frank that was a problem because it makes that institution's research beholden to the business financing them," Spoehr said.
Instead, Newman supported a "detached honesty" policy, under which research could not be compromised by a business relationship, she said.
As founder and head of the Futures Project - which examines a variety of institutions both in the United States and abroad to understand change in higher education - Newman received money from foundations to fund research and request policy changes to better serve society's needs, said research associate Jamie Scurry, who worked closely with Newman.
The Futures Project has been based at the Taubman Center for the last seven years, but it will end in March 2005.
"It is not possible for the Futures Project to go on without Frank," Scurry said.
A book written by Newman, Scurry and Associate Project Director Lara Courturier has recently been published. Entitled "The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risk of the Market," the book focuses on the issues of access and attainment - how schools must make it possible for students who do not come from privileged backgrounds to receive higher education, and how once these students gain access to higher education, schools need to set up cultural and academic support systems to ensure that they do not wash out after one year.
Scurry said she hopes to publish more of the research she did with Newman. The rest of the Futures Project's research money will be put toward creating a comprehensive Web site where their research findings will be available, she said.
From the beginning of his career, Newman faced resistance in promoting his ideas, Scurry said. "Frank was a visionary of technology use in higher education. Now we think, 'of course technology is a part of learning,' but it didn't used to be that way," she said.
"He called for higher education's inclusion of minorities and women. We take for granted now what Frank was a radical for proposing in the past," she said.
Scurry said Newman did whatever Brown needed him to do. "He taught a course for five years for free, he lectured widely and took time with his students," she said. Scurry was a teaching assistant for Newman's SO 106: "Leadership in Organizations" class. "In the class Frank talked about there being two types of people in the world, those who 'do' and those who take credit for what others do. He told students to be in the business of doing," she said. Scurry said he taught his lecture-sized class as a seminar. He asked for constant student participation, she said.
Scurry said Newman was also a mentor for his students. Newman took time to get to know his students and did not stick to his office hours. "We would have so much work in the office and we would need his approval on something, but he'd be seeing student after student - he was that dedicated to teaching," Scurry said.
"Professor Newman incorporated personal stories into the material he was teaching. He had an amazing life to draw from. Through stories he connected personally to students. He put a face to the concepts," said Deitch, who took Newman's leadership course last fall.
Newman had a tremendous amount of energy, and students always paid attention in class, Deitch said. "He was self-effacing and very humble - he was hilarious. He is the best professor I have ever had at Brown, without question," he said.
Deitch said Newman was great with names and faces and that early on in the course, he made connections with all of his students. "Given how accomplished he was, you wouldn't think he would have such close relationships with his students, but he did," he said.
Couturier and Scurry both said Newman was the best person they ever worked for. They cited his personality as being what made him so special. "He was hilarious and his timing was impeccable. He was what so many people want to be. He was a gentleman, he was kind, he was brilliant, and forever cheerful. We miss him a lot," Couturier said.
Scurry added that Newman was also down to earth. "You'd never know how accomplished he was just from talking with him. He took the time to talk with anyone. When he asked 'How are you?' he really cared. When he talked to you, he made you feel like you were the only one that mattered," Scurry said.
Scurry said Newman began work every day at 8 a.m. and didn't leave until at least 5 p.m. She said he expected everyone and every institution to work to the best of their ability. "He loved his work, but he was also very devoted to his wife, which was inspiring," she said.
Newman met his wife, Lucile, when he was an undergraduate at Brown and she an undergraduate at Pembroke College, said his son, Kenneth Newman. "He saw a lot of Brown through the eyes of his wife, who was a professor of anthropology at Brown for 30 years," Kenneth Newman said.
Kenneth Newman said his father was a dynamic person and an unusual thinker. "He would say very radical things but in a reasonable way so that people didn't realize how radical what he was saying really was. The things he said often attacked the status quo," he said.
Newman drew attention to the challenges technology posed to higher education at a time when people did not want to accept that the world of higher education was changing, Kenneth Newman said. "He said that people can't be afraid - they need to acknowledge the future. They can't just stick their heads in a fan and wait for it to go away, because it won't," he said.
Kenneth Newman tutored some of his father's students for the Graduate Record Examination, and he said he could see that Newman's course brought together many different types of people. "Student-athletes and those very involved in political issues built things in common in his class. They became friends," he said.
His father was very happy the last two years of his life at Brown, Kenneth Newman said. "He adored his students and interacting with them. He also adored and believed strongly in (President) Ruth Simmons - he thought she was so courageous and thoughtful and he encouraged board members to be as 'out there' as her," he said.
Newman said the last thing his father wrote was an opinion piece in the Providence Journal. "It was a spirited consent about the convening of the committee on racism at Brown. He was very, very proud of that piece," Newman said.
Newman said he hopes his father is remembered at Brown for his efforts to usher the university into a new era of technology and to increase minority participation at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Newman said his father loved Rhode Island. "He felt that Rhode Island didn't put others down - he had a great Rhode Island experience," he said. Newman said his father lived on the water in Jamestown. "His favorite, favorite thing was to take his grandchildren sailing," he said.
To honor Frank Newman's life, his friends and family have established the Frank Newman Leadership Award. The Newman Award includes a college scholarship and will be given to students who have "shown potential for civic leadership through community service and scholastic achievement," according to the scholarship announcement. Campus Compact will manage the fund and choose the student recipients.
