[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 78 (Wednesday, May 20, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5693-S5694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING NORVAL POHL

 Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to Dr. Norval 
Pohl, former president of the University of North Texas, who passed 
away last week after a courageous battle against pancreatic cancer.
  Dr. Pohl joined the UNT com unity in 1999 as the executive vice 
president and provost and became the university's 13th president in 
October 2000.
  Under Dr. Pohl's leadership at UNT, enrollment grew from 27,000 to 
over 32,000 students. During the same period, the university's Latino 
enrollment increased by 48 percent and African-American enrollment 
increased by 43 percent. Financial aid awards increased from $57.8 
million to $172.2 million, and annual giving to UNT increased from $4.7 
million to $13.4 million. Dr. Pohl is also recognized for addressing 
title IX issues with the acquisition of the Liberty Christian School

[[Page S5694]]

property, which increased both academic and athletic space for the 
university.
  Among his other accomplishments, he worked to advance UNT as a public 
research institution. He fulfilled a long held desire at UNT for an 
engineering school by establishing the College of Engineering and 
creating a permanent home for engineering at the UNT Research Park.
  After leaving UNT, he joined the faculty at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical 
University's Prescott campus and was named chief academic officer in 
January of this year.
  Dr. Pohl spent the better part of his career in higher education 
serving as both an administrator and a professor at several 
universities across the southwest. Dr. Norval Pohl was a great asset to 
the academic communities he served and he will be missed at the 
universities he leaves behind. I would like to express my condolences 
to Dr. Pohl's family and friends and my admiration for his devotion to 
higher education.

                          ____________________