Flanagan is receiving high marks at Framingham State

If not for the intervention of his undergraduate advis er at a small Catholic university in Erie, Pa., the life of Timothy J. Flanagan, Framingham State College's 15th president, would have taken a far different course.

That advice -- to reject an early job offer and enter graduate school -- set Flanagan on a path toward academia as a supporter of strong student-professor relationships.

The 55-year-old criminologist is starting his second semester as president of the 6,000-student liberal arts college, which is striving to distinguish itself in Massachusetts' crowded higher education marketplace. So far, he's drawing praise from campus leaders.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in political science from Gannon University in 1973, Flanagan, a Pittsburgh native, was ready to accept a job as a probation officer from an Erie judge whose successful campaign he helped manage.

But Gannon anthropology professor Jude Kirkpatrick had a different idea. On a long plane ride, Kirkpatrick sat next to a professor from the State University of New York at Albany who discussed his work in criminal justice and delinquency, subjects Kirkpatrick knew interested Flanagan.

"Tim, you've got to go to grad school. You've got to go to Albany," Flanagan remembers Kirkpatrick telling him after that flight. "I met this guy on the plane. The guy's brilliant. You have to go study with him."

Flanagan absorbed the enthusiasm and set off for Albany with Nancy, his wife of two weeks. There he studied with the late Leslie T. Wilkins and earned master's and doctoral degrees in criminal justice, spending one year as an instructor at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.

He later was named to the faculty at SUNY- Albany, where he spent most of the 1980s. He moved to Texas, where he was dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University before returning to the New York state university system in 1998 as chief academic officer of the College at Brockport.

Flanagan's rise through academia, during which he has become one of the nation's most-cited criminology experts, can be attributed to that one professor's prodding and, he said, to a scholarship that made his undergraduate education at Gannon possible.

"He knew me, and I trusted his advice," Flanagan said. "Undergraduate students need that sort of guidance and personal contact with faculty."

Campus leaders said Flanagan has been an approachable president in his first months on the job and has been receptive to ideas such as bringing back an on-campus day-care center and making sure there are plenty of activities to keep students from fleeing the campus on weekends.

"He's just always very visible," said student government president Dave Callaghan, a senior from Shrewsbury.

Flanagan said he begins his days around 6:30 a.m., often going through campus on a 3-mile walk with his wife and Cassie, the couple's 11-year-old golden retriever. They live in a college-owned house adjacent to campus. That's a change from the six-year tenure of previous president Helen Heineman, who kept the off-campus home she owned as a professor at the college.

"He's probably the friendliest guy on campus," said Jake Oliveira, a junior political science major from Ludlow who is the student representative on the college's trustee board. "Having him living [near] campus makes it really good for students. I live in a residence hall just down the street from their house. They'll both wave at students coming in."

Flanagan has spent his first several months meeting community leaders, state lawmakers, professors, staff, and students. He inherited a campus-wide construction program that has cost $60 million in taxpayer money. The campus is nearing the end of a five-year plan to renovate all its residence halls. Dwight Hall -- where the administrative offices and a performance hall are located -- is in the middle of a $9.3 million upgrade. And numerous infrastructure projects are ongoing.

The college, which often touts its status as the nation's first public school created to educate teachers, is trying to meet more contemporary needs and recently received approval to offer a master's degree in business administration. Flanagan also wants the college to establish an undergraduate degree in environmental science and look into establishing a master's of science program in nursing with a focus on nursing education. Flanagan, whose wife has a doctorate in nursing, said there's a nationwide shortage of nursing educators.

But Flanagan said he's got broader ambitions for the 167-year-old institution. To move Framingham State College closer to the top of prospective students' lists and encourage greater financial support, Flanagan said it needs to do a better job getting its message out.

One of his first moves has been to create new positions focused on reaching alumni and the public. He also wants to make information about the school's graduation rates and performance on licensing exams more easily accessible.

"We happen to live here in the most educationally rich, the educationally densest part of the United States," Flanagan said. "A kid graduating from high school in Brockton or Milford or Lowell, within an hour's drive, you've got this tremendous choice of institutions -- large, small, public, private, religious. So you've got to respond to that by getting the word out about what's special about us. Why are we even worth a campus visit?"

While the college has increasingly had the luxury of becoming more selective, Flanagan said the school needs to make sure it is reaching out to a broad base of potential students, including immigrants and international students. "We need to give much more attention to how do we attract people who come from a culture where perhaps higher education was not within their range of aspirations, and make it accessible and make it affordable for them, " Flanagan said.

Financial aid also needs to be more available, he said. About 70 percent of the college's students receive some form of financial assistance and 14 percent receive a scholarship.

He also is in talks with Franklin's leaders about offering courses and degrees in that town.

Government professor John Ambacher, who is president of the college's union of professors and librarians, appreciates that Flanagan understands one of the challenges in attracting new faculty is the disparity between pay and the cost of living in Framingham. First-year faculty earn $45,000 to $48,000.

Flanagan pointed out that some colleges offer subsidized faculty housing, an idea Ambacher said is worth a look.

Ambacher said Flanagan so far "would pretty much get kudos from everyone on campus. He's open-minded and he listens. At this point in time we've been very fortunate to get the type of person we did."

Student and faculty leaders credit Flanagan with working quickly to solve problems, like recently moving an overcrowded math class to a larger space.

"The most rewarding day at work is the day when you can either knock down an obstacle or put some resources in place to help someone get something done," he said. "That's a really exciting day at the office."

John C. Drake can be reached at 508-820-4229 or jdrake@globe.com.