{"id":15437,"date":"2020-02-21T16:39:07","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T23:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?page_id=15437"},"modified":"2023-09-14T09:31:16","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T15:31:16","slug":"tom-cronin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/people-of-impact\/tom-cronin\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Emeritus Tom Cronin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cronin on the campaign trail, during his 1982 run as the Democratic candidate for Congress from Colorado\u2019s Fifth Congressional District.<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently retired Colorado College Professor of Political Science Tom Cronin had an influence on two generations of CC students, from January of 1979 through June of 1993, and again from the fall of 2005 to the fall of 2018.<\/p>\n

His teaching and research emphases were on American politics, Colorado politics, and leadership. He held the McHugh Professorship of American Institutions and Leadership.<\/p>\n

Tom Cronin was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston College High School and earned an A.B. in History from Holy Cross College, a Jesuit liberal arts college. He earned two master\u2019s degrees, and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I grew up an Easterner, I quickly fell in love with the West during my Stanford years. Yosemite, Big Sur, and the Pacific Ocean were hard to match,\u201d he says. Cronin added that he loved his graduate studies at Stanford, loved teaching \u2014 and also fell in love with his future wife.<\/p>\n

Professor Cronin says his two favorite locations as a youth were his local public library \u2014 a few blocks in one direction \u2014 and the local basketball gym, at a high school a few blocks in the other direction.\u00a0 \u201cReading and \u2018balling\u2019 were my early passions,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

As a college student, he wrote for the student newspaper, served as a student government representative and a leader in national student organizations, and was a state delegate to a White House Conference on Children and Youth (during the Eisenhower years).<\/p>\n

At Stanford, Cronin was a teaching assistant and resident assistant. He spent one summer as an intern for U.S. Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R-Massachusetts) in Washington, D.C., and another summer as an intern for Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody (D) in Boston.<\/p>\n

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A young Cronin with Senator Saltonstall.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1966, as he was completing his Stanford studies, Cronin was selected as a White House fellow and served as a White House staff aide for Press Secretary Bill Moyers and other domestic policy advisors in the White House. \u201cHaving a desk on the second floor of the White House West Wing was quite a contrast to having a stall on the second floor of Stanford\u2019s Old Main Library\u2026\u201d \u00a0I learned more about real politics that year \u2014 both about the good and the not-so-good \u2014 than I had learned in my academic years at Stanford.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cronin with President Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI greatly benefited from being mentored in these years by cabinet member John W. Gardner, for whom I served as a consultant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cronin was invited to stay on at the White House, but with the White House increasingly concentrated on the war in Vietnam, Cronin left and begin research writing and teaching about leadership and the American presidency. He spent two years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then two years as a research scholar at the Brookings Institution, (a Washington, D.C. think tank) where he wrote \u201cThe State of the Presidency\u201d and related works. He also testified several times before Congress on issues such as the proposed six-year presidential term and federal advisory commissions.<\/p>\n

Cronin first came to Colorado College as a featured speaker during the 1976 Presidential Symposium run by the late Professor Fred Sondermann. \u201cI loved that visit,\u201d Cronin says, \u201cand volunteered to come back if the Political Science Department ever needed a visiting block professor. Three years later, they did invite me back. …And this time I was determined to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

At CC, Cronin won Teacher of the Year and Advisor of the Year Awards, and later the Riley Award presented by the Alumni Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have loved teaching at Colorado College. I have taught at large public and private universities, yet I found the seminar-sized classes on the Block Plan to be the most rewarding and productive format for teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cronin with students on CC’s campus.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cronin served from May to December 1991 as acting president of Colorado College, when President Gresham Riley was on sabbatical in London.\u00a0 During that time, he helped raise funds for the Colorado College Community Service Center, the Lodge at the Baca Campus, a new all-weather track, new scholarships, and new technologies.<\/p>\n

A year later Cronin was selected as president of Whitman College, a selective liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington. \u201cWhitman has a lot in common with CC,\u201d Cronin says, “small classes, a student body from different regions, and an excellent faculty. Cronin says his successful 12 years there were in good part due to what he had learned at Colorado College.<\/p>\n

\"Cronin
Cronin during his time at Whitman College, where he was President for 12 years. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Cronin
Cronin during his time at Whitman College, where he was President for 12 years. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Twelve years later, upon retiring from the Whitman College presidency, Cronin was invited back for what he calls his \u201csecond act\u201d at Colorado College. He returned to writing books on the presidency,\u00a0 Colorado, and national politics. His latest book, \u201cImagining a Great Republic: American Political Novels and the Idea of America,\u201d (2018) won praise as a \u201cmagisterial work indispensable for understanding who we are as well as who we might yet become,\u201d and, in the Steinbeck Review,<\/em> as \u201ca grand tour of American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 30 years, at both Colorado College and Whitman College, Cronin co-authored a best-selling American politics text, \u201cGovernment by the People,\u201d with James MacGregor Burns and Jim Peltason. He also co-authored a prize-winning book called \u201cLeadership Matters\u201d (2012). Cronin says he was helped a lot from having talented research assistants at Colorado College.<\/p>\n

\"Cronin
Cronin walking with students at the college’s Baca campus, which he led the effort to establish and maintain. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Cronin
Cronin speaking with Colorado College President Gresham Riley. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

In 1982, Cronin was the Democratic candidate for Congress from Colorado\u2019s Fifth Congressional District. He says, \u201cI came in second in the election that year yet I learned a lot more about Colorado and politics, and myself.\u201d He also served as a delegate to four national Democratic conventions and in 2012 he was an elector in the Electoral College.<\/p>\n

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Due to Cronin’s prominent involvement in the political sphere, he was among the many political, literary, and academic figures caricatured by David Levine in The New York Review of Books.<\/p><\/div>\n

Cronin was president of the Western Political Science Association and on the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association. He was honored for his writings on the American presidency with his professions\u2019 Charles Merriam Award. He has written for several newspapers, including the Denver Post<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, The Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, and The Colorado Springs Gazette<\/em>. He and his colleague, retired Political Science Professor Bob Loevy, are co-authors of \u201cColorado Politics and Policy,\u201d and write regularly for Colorado newspapers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a privilege to be a part of the Colorado College faculty and staff,\u201d Cronin says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many gifted teachers and supportive staff members here, so many challenging students. Thank you, Colorado College \u2014 to all the students and teachers, presidents and staff, and caring alumni and families who together make up this wonderful community of learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Professors Tania and Tom Cronin in their Colorado Springs home.<\/p><\/div>\n

(Special thanks to\u00a0Dana Bronson, Associate Archivist, at Whitman College<\/a>, for her immense help in providing materials and photographs regarding Cronin’s time at Whitman.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently retired Colorado College Professor of Political Science Tom Cronin had an influence on two generations of CC students, from January of 1979 through June of 1993, and again from the fall of 2005 to the fall of 2018. His teaching and research emphases were on American politics, Colorado politics, and leadership. He held the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":769,"featured_media":0,"parent":13983,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width.php","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15437","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/769"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15437"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15459,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15437\/revisions\/15459"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}