Although Dr. Norman R. Smith, Suffolk’s new president, has forged a national reputation as a troubleshooter who transforms underperforming colleges and universities, he’s looking forward to a change of pace.

Wagner College’s dramatic turnaround in the late 1980s earned widespread praise from faculty and staff, who credit new leadership, renewed morale, and visible campus improvements for reversing years of financial strain.

In his three years as Wagner College president, Dr. Norman Smith has worked hard to improve what was the declining appearance of the 108-year-old college.

Wagner College is a school on the move and it’s shooting for nothing less than a place among the national stars of higher education.

Fall enrollment at Wagner College is up for the fourth consecutive year, and administrators see the growth as a positive indicator of how far the college has come over the last decade.

When Norman Smith leaves Wagner College for England and American University of London sometime next month, he’ll leave a sports legacy.

After five years at Wagner College, president Norman Smith is up. Admissions are up, the average Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score of new students is up, and Smith says Wagner College is up to the challenge of getting “to the top of the lists” of small colleges nationwide.

Dr. Norman Smith, Wagner College’s longest-serving president, bids a fond farewell during emotional commencement exercises at the Grymes Hill campus.

There once was a time when Wagner College was near financial ruin—and it showed. Its sidewalks were cracked, its grass was in need of some green-thumb TLC, and its reputation was on the line. That was before Norman Smith.

Wagner College’s new president, Norman R. Smith, seems to have taken the Grymes Hill campus by storm and sparked an infectious optimism about the school’s ability to rout the financial problems that have beset it for the past several years.

Wagner president Dr. Norman Smith, who has been the driving force behind the effort to upgrade the school’s good name and put it on the educational map, said he was “surprised” and “elated” to have finally drawn this national attention from a respected authority on academic institutions. He should also be proud.

Dr. Norman Smith, Wagner’s longest serving president, is making the 2002 Commencement his 14th and final one closing a chapter of Wagner College’s history that many consider to be the most progressive in the history of the College.

A team of educators representing the prestigious Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools has given Wagner College a glowing evaluation, a prelude to renewal of the school’s accreditation.