Fresno State remembers Harold Haak

By Joshua D scroggin

A busy university president shouldn’t have time to spend critiquing students in a classroom, but former Fresno State president Harold Haak did—and that’s what made him special, linguistics professor Jerry McMenamin said.

“ He would come to classes,” McMenamin said about Haak, who died after an allergic reaction Dec. 26, “and that’s a pretty big commitment for a busy administrator.”

“ That’s probably the most important thing I could say.”

Haak was 68 years old, and he was still a busy administrator at Fresno Pacific University as late as 2002.

Haak was the sixth permanent university president at Fresno State and served from 1980 to 1991. He began his professional career as an assistant and later an associate professor of political science at San Diego State University, an important stepping stone to his job as an administrator according to McMenamin.

McMenamin said the faculty held an appreciation for Haak because he had experienced life on its side of the fence. He was not a professional administrator.

“ He came from the faculty,” McMenamin said. “He was a scholar and a teacher, and that’s not always the case.”

Haak left San Diego in 1971 to become Fresno State’s vice president for academic affairs. Two years later he left to become vice president at the University of Colorado at Denver before coming back to Fresno in 1980.

But if an administrator has previous experience as a faculty member, it doesn’t necessarily transform the university into a perfect world, McMenamin said

“ In some cases that system doesn’t work,” McMenamin said. “Just because you’re a good faculty member, doesn’t mean you’re a good administrator.” But Haak made important connections to the students and faculty.

For McMenamin, those connections were made when Haak visited his classroom.

“ I invited him to my classes on a more or less regular basis,” McMenamin said. “I would ask him to come when the students had their presentations ready.”

In three different years during his administration at Fresno State, Haak sat in on McMenamin’s linguistics classes. He listened to students’ presentations and commented on each one.

“ The students liked to have him there,” McMenamin said.

It might not have been listed on Haak’s professional achievements, but the time spent with students was an important gesture, according to McMenamin, who said he came to Fresno State the same year Haak returned to Fresno.

“ On the grand scale, it’s a very small thing compared to great things school presidents accomplish,” McMenamin said. “The most important thing about it is that he would give his time to students when he was so busy.”

McMenamin said students got a chance to see that a university president is not just a distant figure, and they got a chance to talk to him after class.