Lattie F. Coor Jr., the 15th president of Arizona State University whose tenure achieved major milestones for ASU as a research institution, died Thursday evening at age 89.
“ASU would not be the institution it is today without Lattie Coor’s vision, leadership and commitment to the community,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said.
“Our university’s advancements in research growth, semiconductor R&D, workforce development, community partnerships, public health and service to learners across Arizona and around the globe — is all rooted in Lattie’s foresight and dedication to what ASU could become. With his passing, the university and the state have lost a grand champion, and Sybil and I have lost a dear friend and colleague.”
Coor almost didn’t take the job.
Before he became president of ASU in 1990, he held the same post at the University of Vermont for nearly 14 years. In a 2018 interview for the Arizona Historymakers Project, Coor admitted, “I really did not intend to take another presidency. My thinking … was that it was about time for me to start doing something else.”
His decision to reconsider was a turning point for ASU. When Crow dedicated the five-story Lattie F. Coor Hall on ASU’s Tempe campus in 2004, he said, “This building’s grand stature lives up to its namesake. Lattie Coor elevated the university’s status as a major research institution with high-quality academics and a diverse student body.”
Part of the legacy of Coor’s 12-year tenure is evident in the need to specify ASU’s Tempe campus — or the West Valley, Polytechnic or Downtown Phoenix campuses. In his 1990 inaugural address, Coor stated, “Arizona State University is now ready to take that great step, one that I believe will mark the beginning of a new era. We are ready to move ASU forward as a world-class university functioning in a multi-campus setting.”
It was his vision for ASU’s future that brought Coor back to his hometown, where he was born in 1936 to schoolteacher parents. His father had earned his teaching degree from ASU, then named Tempe State Teachers College. Lattie Coor Jr. was salutatorian of his graduating class at Litchfield High School, where his favorite subjects were history and social science.
“I was intrigued by the window it gave into the world,” he said in a 2006 interview for the Living History Video Project by the ASU Retirees Association.
Coor majored in social science at Arizona State College at Flagstaff, now Northern Arizona University, planning on a law degree, and possibly a political career, until his sophomore year and what he called his “burning bush” moment. Coor recalled in his 2006 interview for the ASU Retirees Association being “so moved by the power of intellectual exploration that I absolutely, completely planned to be a faculty member.”
