Longtime Adams State history professor Ed Crowther, Ph.D., died Sunday at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs from complications due to an injury suffered during the recent holidays, the campus announced.
Crowther was synonymous with Adams State and Alamosa ever since joining the university as assistant professor of history in 1988. He was a mainstay on the Grizzlies sidelines as a volunteer football coach and student-athlete mentor throughout his career at Adams State and delivered the annual Martin Luther King address to the campus each year.
“It’s hard to believe. He was just a full-of-life kind of guy,” said Adams State communications director and longtime colleague Linda Relyea.
Adams State notified the campus of Crowther’s death in email Sunday evening. “First, as a professor, and later as a friend, colleague and mentor, Dr. Crowther left a significant impact on my life as an individual and professionally as an academic,” said President David Tandberg.
Adams State called him “a true champion” of the university who directed his “passion and impressive energy to Adams State students.”
“He truly loved this University and was dedicated to its success,” Tandberg said. “The arc of my life was indelibly impacted by Dr. Crowther. On behalf of the entire university, I extend condolences to his family and close friends. He will be sorely missed.”
He retired as a full-time professor and department director in 2018, and was appointed board chair of the Adams State Foundation in 2023.
“I was very lucky to earn a living pursuing a rather esoteric discipline, and to have the chance to teach it and work with students and colleagues,” Crowther said upon his retirement, when he was named emeritus professor of history.
From 1998 until he retired in 2018, Crowther headed the Department of History, Government, and Philosophy, renamed the Department of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Science and Spanish in 2003. He simultaneously chaired the Department of Teacher Education from 2011 to 2017 and the Department of Human Performance and Physical Education in 2006-07. He also served with the Office of State Colleges in Colorado during 2002-03 as associate vice president for academic and student affairs.
Crowther developed Adams State’s Master of Art in Humanities – History program in 2007.
His books include Southern Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War. He also is a co-editor of and contributor to the volume The Enduring Lost Cause, which looks at how ideas that constitute the South’s Lost Cause have manifested themselves in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
He earned his bachelor’s from Mississippi College and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in history from Auburn University. He played football collegiately at Mississippi College.