Norval Pohl is exhilarated. Stepping up to the university’s top job, he is certain he arrived in the right place at the right time.

“I see UNT advancing toward a very bright future,” he says. “In 21 months on campus before my appointment to the presidency, I developed a keen appreciation for how UNT has positioned itself as the premier educational, intellectual, research and cultural resource for the increasingly dynamic North Texas region.

“We are on the right course and our reputation is strong. We have the potential and ability to rise to even higher levels of distinction. My goal is to help motivate all members of the university family — alumni, students, faculty, staff and administrators — to help UNT become an even greater university,” Pohl explains.

Smart investments

Pohl draws many of his guiding principles from his background in business administration and economics; this is evident in his conversation and in his speeches. As a result, he categorizes UNT degrees as investments and one of his earliest priorities is to ensure that every “investment” of alumni and new graduates will continue to grow in value and prestige.

“I want to hear alumni saying, ‘UNT was a great institution while I was there, and now it’s even better,’” he says.

Regents’ Vice Chair Burle Pettit (’60) affirms that the Board of Regents selected Pohl, an academic administrator with nearly 30 years of experience and an excellent record of accomplishments, for the provost and executive vice president post with an eventual presidency in mind.

“We were delighted to find that his exceptional performance as provost and executive vice president earned such respect from the academic community that the Faculty Senate, the Deans Council, the Associate Deans Council and the Staff Council issued strong endorsements for his appointment,” Pettit says.

Excellent rapport

Only two months into his presidency, Pohl still is taking the measure of the job and its many challenges. However, he furnishes a key insight into his style in describing Robert C. Maxson as his idea of a model administrator. Maxson is president of California State University at Long Beach and former president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Pohl, who worked with Maxson at UNLV, says he was impressed with his positive attitude, casual style and excellent rapport with students and faculty. “He changed the entire culture of that university,” says Pohl.

Many at UNT cite Pohl for the same attributes he admires in Maxson.

Pohl’s casual style gets high marks from Brandon Daniels, a junior English major from McGregor. Daniels, an active participant in the Student Government Association and NT40, enthusiastically describes his first meeting with the new president:

“I said, ‘Hello, my name is Brandon,’ and he said, ‘Hello, my name is Norval.’”

Daniels also says students were impressed that this “student-oriented president” wore blue jeans to the special lighting of this year’s Homecoming bonfire.

Changing directions

Before joining UNT, Pohl served four years as vice president for finance and administration at UNLV and was dean of UNLV’s College of Business and Economics and a professor of management. Prior to that he was dean of the College of Business Administration and professor of business administration at Northern Arizona University. His teaching career also includes assistant and associate professorship appointments in the Department of Management Systems in the Graduate College of Business at the University of Santa Clara and at Arizona State University.

Pohl grew up on his family’s farm in California’s Central Valley. When he was 13 years old, his father died and his older brother took responsibility for the farm. At the time, Pohl believed that the farm would be his destiny, too.

In 1965, he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University at Fresno and returned to help run the farm and build a commercial harvesting business. However, his life and destiny began to change a couple of years later when he decided to increase his business knowledge by enrolling in an evening program of graduate-level management courses.

The roots of Pohl’s student-oriented philosophy can be traced to the faculty mentoring that encouraged him to pursue his two graduate degrees. Recognizing his academic talent, his night school professors advised him to enter CSU’s full-time M.B.A. program. That step moved him away from farming for good. While Pohl was working on his master’s degree, one of his major professors helped guide him in the direction of a Ph.D. program. He completed his M.B.A. at CSU in 1969 and went on to earn his doctorate in quantitative systems at Arizona State University in 1973.

Pohl’s wife of 30 years, Barbikay B. Bissell Pohl, is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Math and Computer Science at Texas Woman’s University. They have two sons, Prescott, who attends law school at the University of Oregon, and Chandler, who is in a graduate program at the American Film Institute.