Joseph R. Smiley papers

Dr. Joseph Royall Smiley succeeded Quigg Newton to become the ninth president of the University of Colorado on July 1, 1963. Born March 16, 1910 in Dallas, Texas, Smiley received his bachelors and masters both from Southern Methodist University in French and German, and French Literature respectively. In 1947, Dr. Smiley completed his Ph.D. in French at Columbia University. Joseph Smiley married the former Mary Fincher of Waldo, Arkansas, in 1935, and they became the parents of two children, Stephen and Anne. During WWII, Smiley served as a lieutenant in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Pearl Harbor from 1943-1946.

Joseph Smiley started out, after graduating from high school at 16, pursuing a career in medicine. At Southern Methodist, where he began classes in 1927, he enrolled in pre-med courses and studied German. At the end of his sophomore year, however, he knew he would have to borrow money to continue, after his father, a Dallas hat manufacturer, had gone broke the year before. He did have an alternative: “I had taken Latin in high school, German in connection with pre-medical studies, and comparative literature and I liked them all,” he had recalled, “and I was given direction and guidance by Dr. Charles F. Zeek, head of the department of French at Southern Methodist.” Dr. Zeek, a former Rhodes Scholar and educated at the University of Paris, advised the young Smiley to learn another language, and that it should be French.

In the summer of 1933 Joseph Smiley quit a $75 a week job as a credit reporter determined to explore France. He had saved up $150. In Galveston, where freighters plied the Atlantic shipping lanes on regular routes between Europe and America, Smiley signed on a cotton boat as a mess boy, working a regular watch. By the time the ship docked in Bremerhaven, Germany, and even more so by the time the train entered Paris, the 23-year-old Texan was eager to take a close look at the country with whose language and literature he had fallen in love. France in 1933, as Smiley soon discovered, was in the tranquil, innocent twilight between World Wars. Scars of the Great War that had ended 15 years earlier were still in evidence and the rumbling of Panzer divisions was still a distant, barely imaginable sound. Smiley found his $151 (besides passage, the messboy job paid $1) made him virtually wealthy—the French franc was worth about four cents and a good room cost only about 10 francs—and he enjoyed days crammed with museum and library haunting, and wine and food at such famed places a Les Deux Magots, Le Rat Mort, and La Rotonde.

After returning from his summer in Paris, Smiley took his first teaching job as an instructor in French and Spanish at Arkansas A & M College, Magnolia, and Arkansas. It was here that Joseph Smiley met student Mary Fincher, and they married in 1935. That fall, Smiley took a job as instructor at North Texas State College in Denton. Later Smiley lectured at Columbia University, and in the late 1930s he attended Columbia to work towards a PhD in French. His dissertation “Diderot’s Relations with Grimm” was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1950. It was at the University of Illinois that Dr. Smiley began his transformation from the classroom to administration. Smiley started as an assistant professor in 1947 and by 1954 he had moved up to dean of the College of Liberal Arts, with service in between as professor and chairman of the Department of French, and associate dean of the Graduate College. It was during his tenure in Illinois that he returned to Paris as a Fulbright Research Fellow with his wife and two children. In France Smiley poured over original manuscripts and letters by many 18th century French literary greats at the Bibliotheque Nationale, while his children studied at the American school which was held in converted Nazi barracks.

Following his return from France, Smiley was offered the position of president at the Texas Western College campus in El Paso, Texas, where he served for two years. He later moved up to Austin, remaining in the University of Texas system, and serving as vice president and provost for one year. From 1961-1963 Smiley served as the president of the main university in Austin.

The Smiley presidency of the University of Colorado, from July, 1963 to June, 1969, was a particular challenge. “When the Colorado selection committee interviewed me,” he said, “I knew that this institution—the finest in the university in the Rocky Mountain region—was badly torn from political divisions and that its chief appeal, from an administrative standpoint, was the awesome job that needed to be done to help lift it above the political fractionalization that was tearing it apart.” During Smiley’s first 20 months in office at the University of Colorado, Dr. Smiley reorganized the university’s top administration, appointing three new vice presidents, eight academic deans, as well as numerous other administrative officers. The University’s Centers in Denver and Colorado Springs were brought into the regular academic administration, and steps were implemented to insure that their programs were the equivalent of the academic programs in Boulder. Furthermore, the university was accepted into the Association of American Universities, and a Graduate School of Business Administration and School of Dentistry were added. Enrollment climbed steadily during his term; nearly 4000 additional students attended the Boulder campus to bring enrollment up to over 18,000, with a total of more than 30,000 students across all four campuses. In addition, the faculty on the Boulder campus increased from 587 to 922 which included many distinguished professors among the appointments. The university’s budget increased by nearly $40 million, and the value of the Physical Plant nearly doubled from $69 million to $133 million. Norlin Library passed the 1 million volume mark, thrusting its status into the rankings of the more prestigious universities. President Smiley’s administration at Colorado, one newspaper editorial said, was marked by “peaceful and constructive progress. His contribution has been abundant in the great educational values of excellence, integrity, freedom, and action.” Dr. Smiley was a social advocate for higher education throughout the state of Colorado, speaking to alumni and schools statewide stressing the University’s role in the educational, economical and cultural life of the state’s citizens. Smiley served on numerous local and state civic groups, and at the national level. In the fall of 1966 Dr. Smiley was selected by President Lyndon Johnson as one of five Americans to the delegation representing the U.S. at the biennial General Conference in Paris of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He served as a member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellows, and also as chairman of the Advisory Commission for Educational and Cultural Affairs of the State Department. In the fall of 1966 Dr. Smiley was selected to receive the distinguished commendation of knight of the French Legion of Honor. He was also awarded two Doctor of Laws honorary degrees from Southern Methodist University in 1964; and from the University of Denver in 1966. When Smiley resigned in February 1969 to announce he would return to El Paso to accept the presidency of UT El Paso, the Boulder Daily Camera’s editorial entitled “Dr. Smiley Has Enhanced CU’s Stature,” stated succinctly, “The general reaction to is resignation—in the community and on campus—is one of regret. We don’t like to see a good man go.”

Dr. Smiley served as the president of University of Texas El Paso until 1973 and upon retirement was bestowed the President Emeritus designation. He then continued teaching at UTEP as the H.Y. Benedict Professor of Modern Languages until 1980 when he became Professor Emeritus. Dr. Smiley remained in El Paso the remainder of his life, succumbing to cancer on May 25, 1990 at age 80.