30 / 48
30
I
Nonprofit
Performance
Magazine
T
. Marshall Hahn Jr. died in May
2016 at the age of 89, 54 years
after undertaking the presidency of
Virginia’s historically white male
military land-grant institution, known
then as VPI (Virginia Polytechnic
Institute) and now as Virginia Tech.
VPI grew up in the Blacksburg area, a small
town west of the Blue Ridge and far from
major population centers. It was a good
school with real strengths and limitations.
Marshall Hahn said that he had accepted
the office “deliberately, with the idea that
with engineering and agriculture, both of
which had some national prominence, that
you could develop a nationally prominent
institution…that you could really build.”
“There was real opportunity to stir things
up,” Hahn explained. “The state needed to
be awakened, the institution needed to be
vitalized, and the opportunity was just hitting
you over the head every morning.”
What transformations did he seek, what did
he accomplish, and how did he transform
the institution, building a comprehensive
university, a nationally prominent institution?
Marshall Hahn brought many advantages to
his new position. He had lived his entire 35
years in association with the public land-grant
education system. His father was a physics
professor at the University of Kentucky, and
there Hahn Jr. earned his undergraduate
degree at the age of 18. He did his doctoral
work at another land-grant school,MIT, then
taught physics at Kentucky, before moving
to VPI for five years as professor of physics
and department head. Then he departed
for another land-grant school, Kansas State
University, as dean of its new College of Arts
and Sciences.
After three years away, he returned to VPI,
prepared to move VPI along the path he had
observed and nurtured in Kansas. He came
to his new post determined to build mightily
on VPI’s strengths. Moreover, Hahn had
boundless energy, tremendous people skills
and a photographic memory.
But it was how Hahn went about his
leadership roles at VPI that shaped his super-
sized legacy. The ways he presided over VPI
provide a model for anyone embarking on a
leadership role in central administration in
higher education or any nonprofit.
Hahn came to VPI with a clear strategy and
a strong set of tactics, but he did not presume
to dictate a transformation. He articulated
his goals and his rationale, and he set out to
persuade people to join him. President Hahn
cultivated his core stakeholders, without
whom he would almost surely have failed
utterly. Most of all, that meant securing the
active support of the board of visitors, the
trustees who had enormous sway in steering
the enterprise.
Hahn’s administration swiftly recruited deans
for the emerging colleges of engineering,
agriculture, business, architecture, arts and
Creating a University
PETEr wALLENSTEiN
sciences, and home economics. Into
the hands of these new deans he
entrusted the recruitment of new
department heads and faculty. A
serious commitment to research as
well as teaching was required of each
new faculty, and greatly increased
emphasis on research in the growing cohorts
of graduate students.
Hahn also cultivated the governor of Virginia
and the lieutenant governor who became the
next governor, as well as the state legislature.
He would need a big boost in financial
resources, and he energetically sought that
funding. Beyond his own institution, he
actively sought to enhance the entire Virginia
public higher education system, and he was
instrumental in securing enactment of a new
system of community colleges.
Marshall Hahn had advantages beyond his
personal characteristics and institutional
experiences. In the 1960s, the nation and the
state were prospering. Hahn arrived when
the legislature was receptive to substantial
increases in taxes and spending for education.
He began his presidency when the baby
boom was about to crest, so he perceived the
opportunity and obligation to make space
available for an additional thousand students
every year. New funding would enable the
rapid growth of faculty and salary raises
that could make the institution attractive to
the best new faculty, as well as the physical
infrastructure to supply additional classrooms,
residence halls, and labs.
Uncoupling the campus from its twenty-
year connection to Radford College was
crucial. He believed he could not have the