We all have our first day at the University stories, and this is mine. And I don’t know if it’s a story so much as it was a feeling.
I was scared to death when I walked onto campus as a first-year student for my first day of classes on Monday, Aug. 31, 1981. The University had already reached out to first-year students like me through a variety of ways. There was a student orientation, student sponsor meetings, advisement sessions with representatives from the University’s nine colleges, a convocation address by President Joe Crowley, and during that first week of classes, the traditional all-school picnic in Manzanita Bowl.
Yet, as one of 7,680 students who were registered for classes in fall 1981 (registration was actually up 3.7 percent, even with an increase in tuition and fees), I wasn’t sure if I was going to last that first week, let alone that first semester.
Why? I was an extremely shy kid from Sparks. I’d enjoyed my time and made a number of good friends at Bishop Manogue Catholic High School in Reno. How time has changed. Manogue was located then in a quiet neighborhood only a stone’s throw from the University’s campus, on Bartlett Street off Valley Road.
But while there was a sense of comfort and familiarity that I’d developed during my time at Manogue, the University, located only a few hundred yards away over a set of railroad tracks and up on a hill, was something different entirely. What were the professors like? Did I have the academic chops to survive in a college classroom? Were the students who were already attending the University very nice people? What would they think of me, a quiet kid who had grown up doing 4-H projects, often tending sheep in the morning, and hadn’t had other members of my family who had ever gone to college?
Maybe there was still time to back out. Maybe attending the University of Nevada, Reno had been a foolish mistake.
As it turned out, attending the University of Nevada, Reno wasn’t a mistake at all. It was a fateful and important decision. It was perhaps the best decision I would ever make in my life. I went from feeling scared to feeling that the University of Nevada, Reno has a way, because of the people you meet and the experiences that you have here, of getting in your bones. It is a University that helps you find your purpose. And it’s a University that never leaves you.
The University has awarded more than 125,000 degrees since the conferral of our first degree back in 1891. During that time, we have transformed countless lives. We have been an indispensable lever in helping the state of Nevada find its economic and social path to the future. And we have made dreams become reality. Since we first opened our doors to a student body of seven students in Elko on Oct. 12, 1874, our University has become a silver gate of opportunity for a state that is constantly evolving.
With the University’s Sesquicentennial upon us in 2024, this idea of service to Nevada — whether it is through our tripartite mission of teaching, research and engagement or through the successes of our students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends in the community — is something that I believe will continue to be at the heart of the University’s story for years and years to come. This is what we must always do if we are to realize the long-ago words of Professor N.E. Wilson, who wrote movingly in 1904 in “What the University Stands For,” that, “This University is yours; it should be your pride. Take it; nurture it; support it; sustain it. It depends entirely upon the state — upon the people of the State — what the future of this institution shall be.”
I have found that during my time as president of the University, the Wolf Pack Way is collaborative, and that an individual’s success can only be attained when we enjoy collective success. That we are at our best as a University when we think not about ourselves, but about the lives, dreams and opportunities of our friends and neighbors. That in the common hopes and dreams of all people, we can find the intersections of hope and possibility that have characterized our 150-year history as an institution, and that will help guide us into our next 150 years. On our 150th anniversary, we celebrate this fact, and pledge to carry it with us into our future.
Go Pack!
Brian Sandoval ’86
Condensed from “University of Nevada, 1874-2024: 150 Years of Inspiring Excellence” by John Trent, published by the University of Nevada Press (2024).
