Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in 2002 and has led ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformation into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
Lauded as the “No.1 most innovative school” in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for eleven consecutive years, and garnering top accolades for its global impact and student employability, ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled public enterprise focused on global challenges that grew its research expenditures more than eight-fold since 2003 and earned AAU membership in 2023. Under Crow’s leadership, it has established more than thirty new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched pioneering multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the nation’s first School of Sustainability, and significant initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.
ASU has concurrently achieved record-breaking levels of traditional, online and international student enrollment, first-year student quality and retention, and ethnic and socioeconomic inclusion.
ASU’s meteoric ascent in quality, growth and modernization has earned it separate rankings as one of the top 100 most prestigious universities in the world by Times Higher Education, and a top 100 position in Shanghai Jiao Tong’s 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities.
The recipient of the 2025 Edison Achievement Award, the inaugural American Council on Education Award for Institutional Transformation, and one of TIME magazine’s “10 Best College Presidents,” Crow previously served as executive vice provost and professor of science and technology policy at Columbia University. He has advised the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce, and Energy, as well as defense and intelligence agencies, and serves as Chairman of In-Q-Tel. He is a two-term member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and has advised several nation-states on matters of knowledge enterprise development. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and the American Philosophical Society (APS), Crow is the author of books and articles analyzing knowledge enterprises, science and technology policy, and the design of higher education institutions and systems. He coauthored Designing the New American University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), outlining the imperative for new and creative public university models that advance both academic excellence and broad accessibility, and also, The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of the American Research University (2020), which urges the comprehensive redesign of higher education to educate large numbers of qualified students while leveraging discovery and accessibility. A former member of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and the Council on Foreign Relations, Crow has also served on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council.
Crow earned his PhD in Public Administration (Science and Technology Policy) from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
Born in 1955 in San Diego, California, Crow is married to Dr. Sybil Francis and is the father of three adult children