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TURNER COLLEGE SPOTLIGHT

The Ray and Evelyn Crowley Endowment

A number of stories at Turner Business have mentioned the Turner College’s Ray and Evelyn Crowley Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship.  The current holder of the Crowley Chair is Turner College management professor Kirk Heriot, as each of these prior entries has noted.  None of these prior entries provides details about the origin of this particular endowment.  Established in May of 2005, the Crowley Endowed Chair is named for Ray Crowley and his wife Evelyn, both of whom have contributed substantially to support quality education and scholarship in the Columbus area.  Ray was born in 1932 in Lennox, South Dakota.  He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Dakota in 1955, and later, in 1963, went on to complete the advanced management course at Harvard University.  During his professional career, Crowley, a certified public accountant, held positions with Peat Marwick & Company, Bay State Milling Company, General Mills, and Royal Crown Cola.  In 1974 he became CEO and Board Chairman at Burnham Service Corporation in Columbus.  Throughout his time with Burnham, Crowley held board seats with Liberty Mutual and First Union Bank, among others.  In 1996, after Crowley retired from professional life, he was approached by Noll Van Cleave about joining Van Cleave’s efforts to develop Childcare Network, a Georgia-based network of pre-school education and daycare providers.  Van Cleave’s pitch convinced Crowley to come out of retirement to become both a shareholder and CEO of the organization.  At the time he joined Childcare Network, it had acquired a total of 27 schools around the state.  Under Crowley’s leadership, the network extended beyond Georgia, and by the time he stepped down as CEO in 1999, it had grown to 139 schools in seven states.

 

“We are extremely fortunate to have a university in Columbus acknowledged for its excellence through accreditation by AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.”

 

Ray and Evelyn Crowley, 2005

 

     Engagement in the local community has been a hallmark of the Crowleys’ lives in Columbus.  Ray was elected to the CSU Foundation Board in 1986.  He also chaired CSU’s “Campaign for Excellence” in the 1980s, which at that time was the most successful capital fund campaign ever undertaken in the Columbus area.  The Crowleys’ engagement in the local community has been facilitated by the Crowley Foundation, which supports educational and research endeavors at Columbus State University, the University of Georgia and Duke University, as well as the activities of the Columbus Museum, among many others.  The Crowley Foundation most recently listed assets totaling about $1.4 million.  In addition to these efforts, Ray and Evelyn’s endowment in CSU’s Turner College, which currently boasts a balance of just under $1.9 million, supports Heriot’s research efforts.  With the support of the Crowley endowment, Heriot’s research in entrepreneurship and business management appears in a number of A-rated journals, including Small Business Economics, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, American Business Review and International Journal of Purchasing & Materials Management.  Finally, as the plaque displayed on the second floor of the Synovus Center of Commerce and Technology, home to the Turner College on CSU’s main campus, indicates, the Crowley endowment also supports Turner College students in their preparation for an entrepreneurial approach to business enterprise. 


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