Krepel steps in as president's assistant

by Joe King

Tom Krepel understands first-hand the demands placed upon a university president in these times of shrinking budgets, rising enrollments and shifting demands.

While serving as president of Chadron State College in Nebraska for seven years, he dealt with those issues on a daily basis. Now, as assistant to the president at NIU, he will help John Peters wrestle with many of the same challenges.

“Dr. Krepel is an ideal fit for this job and, I believe, a very good fit for NIU,” Peters said.

After a year without an assistant, Peters knew that his office needed to fill that vacancy to ensure that important initiatives received the attention they deserved.

“In the current funding climate, we have to ensure that every dollar we spend, every investment we make, is efficient and helps us achieve our educational and research goals,” Peters explained. “Having a person of Dr. Krepel's experience to coordinate activities will allow me to spend more time working directly with vice presidents to see that we meet that goal.”

Peters said he also looks forward to having more time to interact with students and faculty, and more energy to devote to his growing duties as a fundraiser for the university.

For his part, Krepel said he stands ready to do whatever is required to move the president's agenda forward, whether that means applying his skills in benchmarking institutional performance and planning, or simply filling in for the president at events or handling important correspondence.

“I believe it is difficult to appreciate the scope and diversity of demands placed upon a university president unless you have served in that position,” Krepel said. “There are only so many hours in the day for John Peters, and I hope to relieve some of his workload.”

Krepel arrived on campus Aug. 1, and since then has been working to familiarize himself with the operations of the university. What he has found is that, in many respects, NIU and Chadron State College have an awful lot in common.

“When I arrived and started sitting through meetings on the budget, I experienced a sense of déjà vu; I had heard all about these issues before. Essentially, the biggest difference between here and Chadron is one of scale.”

At Chadron (which is located in the northwest corner of Nebraska ) Krepel directed the operation of a 281-acre campus with a faculty of 110 fulltime professors serving nearly 3,000 students. It was a job that Krepel had been preparing for from the time he began pursuing advance degrees in educational administration and leadership at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he completed his doctorate in 1983.

After a three-year stint as an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans, Krepel returned to his alma mater in 1986 to serve as an assistant to the chancellor in the area of university relations, specializing in working with legislators. He left that post in 1990 to teach educational administration at St. Cloud State University and, in 1992, was tapped to become the dean of outreach at Texas A&M University.

In 1997, he accepted the position of senior vice president for academic and student affairs at Chadron State, and within a year he was installed as president of that institution.

Chadron had its share of unique challenges, Krepel said.

As the only degree-granting institution in the western half of Nebraska (its service area covers 49,000 square miles), Chadron had to find ways to deliver services to far-flung areas. To overcome that obstacle, Krepel developed the school's capacity to deliver distance learning; during his tenure, Chadron received approval to offer its entire mathematics program, and its MBA program, online.

Krepel also worked hard to develop strong alliances with community colleges, not just within the school's service region, but also in surrounding states. And, on Krepel's watch, the college also earned accreditation for several of its key programs.

Those successes did not go without notice.

In 2001, the Newsweek/Kaplan College Catalog included Chadron on its list of 31 hidden treasures in higher education, and two years later praised the school for providing good value and personal attention for students.

Krepel looks back with pride on his time at Chadron, but when the opportunity to come to NIU arose, he was eager to take the job.

“NIU is not only 10 times larger than Chadron, it also has a strong reputation nationally, a broad portfolio of programs and initiatives and is located in a fast-growing, dynamic area. The opportunity to be part of such an environment offered a great deal of professional advancement and was very attractive,” he said.

In general, he said, the transition from president to assistant has been a smooth one. As he becomes more familiar with NIU, he is increasingly excited at the prospect of helping the university move forward.

Krepel and his wife, Carol, have moved to DeKalb. They have twin sons, age 20, both of whom remain in Nebraska attending college, one at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and the other at Chadron.

9-12-05