UA’s 25th president, Sorensen served from 1996 to 2002.</p>
<p>Dr. Andrew Sorensen’s presidency was a time of significant achievement for our system and this state, said UA System Chancellor Malcolm Portera. We were saddened to learn of his sudden death, and we extend deepest condolences to his beloved wife Donna and their family, who were such a vibrant part of this community.</p>
<p>Under Sorensen, UA gained recognition as one of the top 50 public institutions in the country in an annual list published by U.S. News & World Report. Federal money for grants and contracts more than doubled during his six years. Also, citations of work done by UA’s faculty quadrupled. He also began offering computers to National Merit Finalists who enrolled at UA, and began the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, dedicating the Blount Living Learning Center in 2000.</p>
<p>He was tireless in terms of energy and drive, said Barry Mason, dean of the UA College of Business. He was a man you had to admire for sheer tenacity and determination.</p>
<p>Mason took over as interim president after Sorensen left for South Carolina, serving until current UA President Robert Witt came in March 2003. Sorensen, Mason said, focused on improving the quality of students and research.</p>
<p>He strived to move the campus to being a regional and nationally recognized campus, Mason said. He set the campus on the right direction.</p>
<p>The son of a Presbyterian minister, Sorensen was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1938. After graduating from high school, he went to seminary. But by his senior year in 1962, he decided against leading a parish. After a brief stint as a prison minister, he taught at Lincoln University in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Sorensen went on to get a Bachelor of Divinity at Yale University, and a master’s and doctorate in medical sociology from Yale. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Illinois.</p>
<p>Later, he received a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>He held several teaching and administrative positions in health related schools at Harvard University, University of Massachusetts and Johns Hopkins University before becoming provost at the University of Florida in 1990.</p>
<p>He left that post in 1996 to become UA’s president.</p>
<p>Andy said in his first meeting with the deans that he had assumed the role of Dr. No’ in his former position as provost at the University of Florida, and, he looked forward to assuming a different role at the University of Alabama said UA Provost Judy Bonner, the dean of the College of Human Environmental Sciences under Sorensen.</p>
<p>He maintained constant contact with students, instituting a question-and-answer session with students in Ferguson Center and teaching a biostatistics course each semester.</p>
<p>This allowed him to stay in touch with the students, Bonner said. And, it allowed him to demonstrate to the faculty how important teaching is in the life of a university.</p>
<p>He increased black enrollment and tried to integrate the white Greek organizations while at UA by delaying rush. It was unpopular move with Greek students and alumni and one undone immediately by Witt.</p>
<p>Two thorns stuck in the side of Sorensen’s presidency: state budget and football. Both were never good enough.</p>
<p>Sorensen battled the Legislature for money throughout his tenure, leaving faculty salaries stagnant through his last few years. He was president through two years, 2001 and 2003, of proration, or mid-year cuts to the state education budget, and taxes for education declined in 2001. Commitment from the South Carolina Legislature for money was one thing he cited when leaving Tuscaloosa.</p>
<p>However, Mason said Sorensen tried to make up for loss of state money through fundraising, a skill he excelled at.</p>
<p>He was also haunted by his selection of former Texas Tech athletic director Bob Bockwrath as UA athletics director. Popular football coach Gene Stallings resigned at the end of the 1996 season, not long into the tenure of Sorensen and Bockwrath.</p>
<p>Later in Sorensen’s tenure, the football program was hit with NCAA investigation that slapped stiff penalties on the football program.
**
Sorenson was an agenda setter, but was not seen as a consensus builder. ** Almost since his arrival, there was speculation that he was looking or being looked at for other jobs, and his six years here is the shortest tenure of a president since Oliver Carmichael’s five-year tenure from 1953-1957.</p>
<p>Through it all, Sorensen remained an ordained minister and would often speak from pulpits around the state, almost always wearing a bowtie.</p>
<p>He was a person of integrity, Mason said.</p>
<p>Sorensen is survived by his wife, Donna Sorensen, and two sons. An endowed scholarship at UA is named after the Sorensens, and a special collection held by UA Libraries is named in honor of Donna Sorensen.