The `S' in WSU stands for Smith

PULLMAN - It's hard for Samuel H. Smith to find fresh material these days.

The smooth-talking president of Washington State University, known for walking his school through a decade and a half of dramatic change, seems finally to have said it all.

Or, at least, enough for now.

"Every once in a while you wish that you had something different that you could say," Smith said recently. "But you don't."

The lull in Smith's loquacity seems to stem more from a moment of proud reflection than a case of drawing blanks.

After 15 years at the helm of WSU, where more than 5,000 students graduated yesterday, Smith is set to retire July 1. He will be replaced by V. Lane Rawlins, president of the University of Memphis.

As captain of the land-grant university ringed by waves of Eastern Washington grain, Smith has overseen $757 million in capital improvements to his academic vessel, among them a colossal animal-disease biotechnology research center on the main campus here in Pullman.

Smith also has brought his agrarian-based institution - some still call it Moo U - online and technologically up to date, and he has helped it gain a bigger statewide presence.

Smith, 60, has been at WSU long enough to preside over the commencement of more than one-third of all WSU students, affixing his name to more than 65,000 degrees.

His accomplishments, say friends and colleagues, stem in large part from his tireless tongue, which he trains on politicians, power-brokers, alumni and others who - if cajoled correctly - may reach into their pockets and help make a university president's dreams reality.

"Watch your wallet" is the joke around the state when Smith walks in a room.

"You let me hold onto it, and I'll watch it for you," Smith said he replies. "Trust me, I'm from the government."

Patricia Smith, his wife, has a theory about his ability to schmooze. She says it's genetic.

"Sam's mother calls it the B.S. factor," she said, "that ability to interact with people, to be comfortable with people. You either have it or you don't."

But "having it" has not proved a cure for all of the school's ills.

For years, Smith struggled - and struggles still - with his students' persistent alcohol-fueled exploits, and the bad publicity those escapades invariably bring.

Some faculty members aren't happy with him either, saying he spends too much time wheeling and dealing and not enough with them.

Morale has been low at times, said Peter Burke, chairman of the WSU faculty senate, because faculty members "sense that he is not aware of the issues and problems that faculty have in their daily life."

Product of the lettuce fields

Smith grew up poor in California's Salinas Valley and to this day carries with him the unpretentious air of a man who once made a living hoeing lettuce fields.

His father, a truck driver for an oil company, died in an accident when Smith was 5.

His mother worked as a medical secretary.

"The odds of me going to jail were probably higher than me going to college," Smith said.

Smith beat the odds and won a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a degree in plant pathology in 1961.

These days he jets about, hobnobing with the literati and singing a siren song meant to draw money and resources to the school.

"He gave me and many others a reason to invest in higher education," said Frank Blethen, publisher of The Seattle Times, who chairs an informal cabinet of Seattle-based advisers to Smith.

Smith also serves on the board of directors of The Times.

"I call Sam `the Colombo of higher education,' " Blethen said.

"He comes into a room, amiably works everyone, leaves the room with everyone's wallet and leaves them with his vision."

During Smith's tenure, the university has raked in $475 million in gifts and private grants. In 1996, the most lucrative year for donations to WSU, $55.6 million was received.

Smith isn't responsible for securing every single one of those dollars, but he can claim credit for most of them.

His family had imagined him as a Catholic priest, but Smith is a man of school books - not of The Book - so he pressed on with his education, earning a doctorate in plant pathology at Berkeley in 1964 and joining the faculty there a year later.

In 1969, Smith joined the plant-pathology department at Pennsylvania State University. He stayed in Pennsylvania for 16 years, eventually growing into the deanship of the Penn State college of agriculture.

Then in 1985, Smith moved to Pullman, called west by an offer to take on the presidency at WSU. At that time, the school had 16,139 students and only one campus.

Last year it had more than 21,000 students spread throughout its main campus and the branches in Spokane, Vancouver and the Tri-Cities.

Smith's legacies will likely be his push for "a campus as big as Washington," his busy-beaver building schedule and his quest to improve WSU's technological infrastructure.

"They tease me about being a dreamer," Smith said recently as he drove his immaculate Land Rover around the Pullman campus, pointing with pride to new structures risen from vacant lots.

Another spot on the campus tour that gets Smith gesticulating is a wall just outside the president's office. It's covered with plaques naming university benefactors - names such as Alhadeff, Bledsoe, and Allen, and companies such as Dow Chemical, Boeing, Intel and IBM.All of them have contributed more than $100,000 to WSU.

When Smith started as president, he said, there were only six names on the wall. Now there are 505.

"I know all of these people," Smith said, facing the wall, his 5-foot-8-inch frame dwarfed by its height. With his arms extended, palms up and fingers spread, he's like a man holding a heavy present. "It's personal."

Battling `party-school' label

Though most agree Smith has done a good job working WSU's external relations, he has had some trouble dealing with internal matters.

Rowdy student behavior, often related to alcohol consumption, has been a recurring problem.

A riot on the university's Greek Row in May 1998 that injured 23 police officers was largely fueled by alcohol. Later that May, a student fell from the second-story window of the Sigma Nu fraternity house, severely injuring himself in an incident that authorities believed involved alcohol.

Last month, alcohol was blamed for a standoff between about 500 students and police, which took place on the same street where the 1998 riot had occurred. This time, there were no injuries.

Officials at WSU have long been concerned about the party-school culture and reputation. Smith's administration has tried to take a hard line on alcohol abuse, punishing offending fraternities and even banning drinking in public rooms of residences and fraternities.

Smith said those efforts have put a damper on the party culture, but they also have raised the ire of students such as Casey Smith, 20, a sophomore majoring in business administration.

"The fact that he made the dry policy I think upset a lot of students," Casey Smith said. "Everybody knows you go to college to learn, but at the same time it's supposed to be the best time of your life."

Sam Smith also has faced a discontented and at times disgruntled faculty on the Pullman campus.

"A lot of people on this campus don't like the focus that's been developing on the branch campuses," said Burke, the faculty-senate chairman. "Another part of the sentiment has been that Sam may not have been paying as much attention to internal matters and faculty concerns in recent years - and, in a sense, making decisions without really consulting or being concerned about faculty issues."

Last September, at a special faculty senate meeting to discuss the qualities faculty wanted in a new president, Smith took a drubbing.

Professors said they felt cynicism and distrust toward Smith's administration, and they encouraged the head of the board of regents to find a president who would gain the faculty's respect.

Tom Faulkner, an English professor and director of WSU's humanities research center, told the board of regents head he wanted the presidential search committee to "find a president who is an intellectual," the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported.

The paper further quoted Faulkner, in recounting a visit to Smith's office, saying: "I did not see a single book. I think this is some small gauge of, perhaps, the narrowness of President Smith that we ought to remedy in, perhaps, the next choice."

No loose ends

Smith's office is neat and orderly - nowhere can one find distracting signs of mess or even work in progress.

His "In" and "Out" boxes are stashed inside a cupboard on the opposite side of the room from his desk, which itself looks more like a minimalist print than the workspace of a harried university president.

"He likes things hidden out of sight," said Smith's personal assistant, Deborah Baker. "He doesn't like to leave loose ends on things. Everything's done all the time."

The WSU President's Mansion, a 10,500-square-foot house on Greek Row, is equally tidy.

With about 2,000 guests a year shuffling through it, Smith and his wife have taken to calling their home "the brick fishbowl."

"It's like living in a very, very large bed-and-breakfast," Smith said. The dining table seats 22. The kitchen is industrial strength, ready for caterers to swoop in at a moment's notice.

The Smiths' response to their public life in a town with just over 25,000 people - about 18,400 of them affiliated with the university - is not to have two lives, but one.

"What you see is what you get," said Patricia Smith. "We can't be something else."

Still, the two say, they are constantly being asked what they're really like. "If you want to know the real story, it's pretty dull," said Patricia Smith. "When we're not doing university things we lead a pretty typical life."

Leading a typical life, she hopes, is what the two will do even more vigorously once he retires.

They plan to live in Madison Park in Seattle, where they have a condo. She plans to stay involved in the arts. He, too, wants to keep his fingers in a few things - truth be told, in more than a few things.

"Sam's definition of retirement and mine are pretty different," Patricia Smith said. "If he doesn't stop saying `yes' to things, he's going to be working time and half."

Eli Sanders' phone message number is 206-748-5815. His e-mail address is esanders@seattletimes.com