Dr. Michael Schwartz (1937 - 2024)
video: “The House that Dr. Michael Schwartz Built”
“I cannot begin to tell you what it means to me to have my name on the library. I have said over and over again that it takes two things to have a decent university: professors and a library. Presidents, provosts and deans do not make universities. Information that converts to knowledge that then converts to wisdom (one would hope)—those are the things that make universities. I am thrilled to be a part of the real university.”
—Dr. Michael Schwartz
All of us at the Michael Schwartz Library were saddened to hear of the death of Cleveland State University's fifth president, Michael Schwartz, Ph.D., who died on January 2nd, 2024, following a long illness. He was 86.
Dr. Schwartz served as CSU president from 2002 to 2009, following a one-year term as interim president. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he left an indelible mark on both the physical landscape and the academic ethos of CSU. A tireless advocate for CSU throughout the greater Cleveland area, he made it a personal goal to foster a sense of pride and investment in our CSU community in our students, faculty, staff, and alumni. He oversaw immense changes while preserving and strengthening the University's fundamental purposes of teaching, research, scholarship, and service.
Throughout his extensive career in higher education, he left a lasting impression on every institution he served, including Kent State University, where he served as president for nine years. At Kent, he presided over the opening of Kent's Glenn H. Brown Liquid Crystal Institute, the Kent State University Museum of Fashion, and the Athletic Field House. He is remembered as a steadying force in the years following the May 4, 1970 shootings, and he oversaw the creation of the May 4th Memorial. 
His impact at Cleveland State was profound: by the time Dr. Schwartz retired in 2009, CSU had established new and more rigorous admissions criteria for undergraduates, instituted an honors program, an undergraduate research program, and a common reading program, and revamped general education requirements. Among the new programs established during Dr. Schwartz's presidency were the Arabic language and Middle Eastern studies program; the Center for School Leadership; the International Business Program; the Center for Gene Regulation in Health and Disease; collaborations with the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute; and programs which produced a major rise in the bar passing rate of CSU College of Law graduates.
Under Dr. Schwartz's leadership, the university's revised campus master plan completely transformed the look of our once forbidding, inward-facing campus with the addition of new structures and refurbished facilities, all strategically oriented towards Euclid and Chester Avenues - including installation of the now iconic "CSU" letters on Rhodes Tower - extending a warm welcome to incoming students and local residents, and greatly enhancing the environment for those studying, working, and living at CSU.
We at the library are proud to carry his name, and we will miss him.