BOISE - Time is winding down on the 15-year tenure of Dr. Bob Kustra as President of Boise State University. He is set to retire on June 30.
He leaves a legacy of incredible growth and academic and athletic accomplishments. It has also been a time of change and challenges, just like the challenge of finding his replacement.
The Idaho State Board of Education had narrowed the search down to three candidates, but then on May 17 decided to start over.
"We've made enormous strides at Boise State, and the fact that the board wants to do this over again tells me, and everybody else out there, that they are intent on finding the very best talent to bring in here as the next president of the university," Dr. Kustra said.
On Friday, the board appointed Dr. Martin Schimpf as interim president. Schimpf joined the faculty at Boise State in 1990. He has served in various roles, most recently as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs.
As the search for the next president moves forward, Dr. Kustra looked back on his 15 years at Boise State during a conversation with KTVB's Doug Petcash for this Sunday morning's Viewpoint.
"I've had a ball," Kustra said. "This has been the best job of my life."
Now 75, Kustra believes the time is right for him to step aside.
"I really am a believer in fresh blood," Kustra said. "We've tried to do that internally, but it's finally time to do it at the top of the university."
A big part of Kustra's legacy was built from the ground up. Construction transformed the campus.
The university says $450 million worth of new buildings popped up during his term. Those include the Center for Fine Arts that's being built now, the Micron Business and Economics Building next door and Sawtooth Hall student housing, to name a few.
A legacy in concrete, brick and steel. But the thing Kustra considers his greatest accomplishment is a little more abstract.
"The College of Innovation and Design we created to do something entirely different," Kustra said. "We wanted it to think out of the box, find new kinds of degrees that employers were telling us were needed now more than ever."
The student population has also grown in 15 years from about 18,000 to 24,000.
"Football had a lot to do with that," Kustra said.
One game in particular. Kustra says the 2007 victory in the Fiesta Bowl over Oklahoma raised Boise State's reputation around the country and helped recruit new students.
In his speech at the welcome home celebration on the steps of the State Capitol Building, he said something that proved to be prescient; that the team did more than win a game.
He said, "They (the team) have positioned Boise State University for greatness in everything we do."
Today, he believes that has played out.
"If we went to the national stage with a football, why can't we take the College of Engineering, and the MFA in Creative Writing and the Theater Department and the Marketing Department over in the College of Business, and that's precisely what we've done," Kustra said.
Sports haven't always been smooth for Kustra. Take his decision to drop the wrestling program in favor of starting a baseball program. It was controversial, but he firmly stands by it today.
"If you're in a conference, the objective is to align your athletic programs with the conference's athletic programs, and baseball was missing," Kustra said.
He added that baseball is expected to bring in revenue, where wrestling did not.
Kustra says state funding is the biggest challenge facing higher education in Idaho and Boise State in particular.
"We are a public university and only 17 percent of our funding is coming from the state today," Kustra said.
Kustra says he is hopeful his successor will continue the battle of making the point with the legislature and the new governor that the funding formula has to change to recognize growth.
But Dr. Kustra won't just sail off into the wild blue, and orange, yonder. He says he'll work with the Boise State School of Public Service, guest lecture, and continue to do his Boise State Public Radio show "Readers Corner."
Keeping close to the university he loves, but ready for retirement from the top job.
"I'm going to miss it. There's no doubt about it. It's a bittersweet decision in the sense that, yeah, you think about the free time you'll have, but then you think about the free time you'll have," Kustra said laughing.
You can see Doug Petcash's full conversation with Dr. Kustra Sunday morning at 6:30 on Viewpoint on KTVB.