Campus pushes for private money

On a recent Sunday afternoon Jim Collier sat in Greeley, Colo. wearing shorts and a polo shirt near a pile of cardboard boxes preparing to move to San Francisco. He would rather have been playing golf that day, but his new job at SF State starts in less than a week.

Collier, 57, was chosen from more than 100 applicants to become the university's first vice president for university advancement starting Monday.

In his new role, Collier will serve on President Robert Corrigan's cabinet and will oversee several departments, he said in a phone interview from his Colorado home.

Collier said his top priority is to increase the number of private donors which will make "a lasting impact" on SF State.

"It includes alumni relations, fund raising, communications, government relations and those fields that have some external responsibilities representing the institution with those important constituencies," Collier said of the job, which pays an annual salary of $122,000, according to SF State's human resources department.

In the 1994-95 academic year SF State acquired $9.1 million from individual donations, alumni, foundations and corporations, up from $2.5 million in 1992-93, according to the office of public affairs. A self-described "clothes horse," Collier enjoys life in the social fast lane and is accustomed to the hobnobbery of the fundraising profession after 15 years of being "spread very thin" at the University of Washington in Seattle as vice president of university relations.

"I used to say I had a day job at school and lunch meetings and a night job attending banquets, parties and receptions," he said.

Corrigan is pleased with the networking skills of his new hire. "Jim Collier's almost 30 years of experience -- 15 at the vice presidential level -- in various advancement areas, the size and sophistication of the institutions at which he has served, and, most of all, his track record of achievement in exactly the areas we need most make him the clear choice for us," Corrigan said in a prepared statement.

The first thing Collier will do when he settles in at SF State is to get to know the campus.

"If I'm going to represent this institution, I need to understand its aspirations and its strengths through listening and learning," he said. "SF State is ideally situated to become the city's university, with a great potential to generate private dollars.

"I understand, quite well, the West Coast culture," he said, noting similarities between Seattle and San Francisco. "It will provide me with access ... for the university."

Collier said some of the attractions of the job was SF State's "leadership, strong faculty and diverse student body."

He said his 30-year career in education has been marked by a willingness to "go where the opportunities are."

The move to SF State was no exception.

After nine months as vice president for university affairs at the University of Northern Colorado, a long-time colleague of Collier's, the school's President Herm Lujan moved on, which prompted Collier to send his resume for SF State's opening. "A very attractive opportunity presented itself at SF State," he said. "An opportunity to get back to the West Coast. (My wife and I) both know and admire San Francisco."

Collier described himself as even-tempered, hard-working and fair and his style as "open, inclusive and participatory."

"He was very kind and always supportive of us," said Bob Roseth, who worked in communications under Collier in Washington.

A native of Yankton, S.D., Collier joked that he is the most famous person to leave the town. Perhaps a more recognizable face to many would take exception to Collier's proclamation. Collier and "NBC News" anchor Tom Brokaw graduated together as part of Yankton High School's Class of '57 and the two are still friends.

Collier was also chief public affairs officer at the University of Illinois, and previously served as a senior administrator in university advancement at the Universities of Kansas and Maryland. The College Park, Md. position was his first big break, Collier said, where he oversaw 400 people at the age of 30 "when I was still a punk."

Collier earned his master's degree in communications from the University of Iowa and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Wichita State University in Kansas.

He founded the PAC-10 Conference's Chief Advancement Officers' Association. And, he has long served on the board of the Washington, D.C.-based Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, as well as the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

Collier has a wife of five years, April, a 32-year-old son Jamie and a 30-year-old daughter Jill, both of whom graduated from the University of Washington under their father's term. A 22-year-old daughter Erin is a senior the University of Arizona in Tuscon.

[ Golden Gater Online September 10, 1996 ]

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