Overview
- ASU president Michael Crow confirmed late Thursday that Lattie Coor Jr. died at age 89 and the university has not released a cause of death.
- Coor led ASU as its 15th president from 1990 to 2002 and is credited with shifting the school’s reputation from a regional party image to a national research university.
- Under his leadership ASU earned Carnegie Level 1 (R1) research status in 1994, research funding grew by nearly 150%, and a five-year campaign raised more than $500 million.
- After retiring in 2002 Coor continued teaching at ASU, founded and later chaired the nonprofit Center for the Future of Arizona, and in 2004 had Lattie F. Coor Hall named on the Tempe campus; he also published a memoir in 2024.
- Coor’s changes—larger endowment, new campuses and boosted research capacity—made ASU more able to attract faculty, federal grants and students and helped drive statewide priorities like semiconductor R&D and workforce development.