Steve Miller retiring

March 30, 2010

After 36 years working at Cornell College, holding positions from swimming coach to associate director of development, Steve Miller ’65 will retire March 31.

Miller’s tenure at Cornell started in 1966, coaching swimming and baseball and serving as assistant football coach. He left Cornell in 1972 and came back in 1980.

He coached basketball and became the athletic director. In fact, over the more than 20 years he’d coach at Cornell, he coached nearly every men’s sports, but never wrestling, tennis or cross-country.

From 1987 until he retired from the Athletic Department in 2002, he was head football coach.

By 2002, after more than two decades in the athletic department, it was time for a new challenge: this time in the Office of College Advancement. His wife, Ruth Keefe Miller ’66, was Alumni Director, and he became an associate director of development in charge of major and planned gifts.

Not long after he started, the college launched its “Extraordinary Opportunities” campaign, something he believes strongly in.

“I caught it at the right time,” he said.

It’s been a great thing, he said, to see his contemporaries step up and assume a leadership role in supporting the college, which makes Cornell stronger for the future.

“The future is more solid and more bright and more promising than I can ever remember it being,” he said.