Ron Crooks, Photographic Arts ’76
Ronald Crooks (Photographic Arts ’76) enjoys making things happen and making a difference. You can see this in the way he approaches life, and in his successful and varied career. Fresh out of Ryerson at 27, he used his training to run a university media centre in Papua New Guinea for two years. And since then he has founded multiple business ventures, helped teachers find new ways to reach cognitively challenged kids, helped entrepreneurs build better businesses and more.
Ron showed up at Ryerson in 1969 a self-described “high-school failure, all hair and attitude.” He credits the dean at the time with what might generously be called a tough-love wake-up call that really turned him around. “That’s why I appreciate this place,” says Ron. “Ryerson made me.”
That impact on his life’s course is the main reason he wants to give back: “I want to make an impact on this place because it’s been very good for me. I wouldn’t have had the life I have without Ryerson.”
So Ron sought out a way to make his money work for maximum benefit at Ryerson. He’s pledged $5,000 a year for five years to support Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS). The government of Ontario then doubles that back, contributing $10,000 on top each year. So over the five years, it will create five $15,000 graduate scholarships. Ron’s gift of $25,000 is tripled in value. Co-named with his son (an RTA alumnus), the Sam Ellens and Ron Crooks Ontario Graduate Scholarships will create $75,000 worth of student financial support. “I like things that I can leverage for more value,” he notes.
That fondness for leverage and that desire to help students are evident in another moment from Ron’s history with Ryerson. When his son Sam was living in residence here in 2007, he found the food a little less appetizing than what his foodie father had been putting on the table for years at home. Ron could have done what many dads would do with this information – come to Toronto, take Sam out for a nice meal, and drop him back at residence full and content. Instead, Ron hustled up the use of several ovens, prepared a glorious standing rib roast, some turkeys and hams, and fed Sam’s entire floor.
Ron sums up this spirit of giving back very simply, paraphrasing the parable of the faithful servant: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” He knows that he and his Baby Boom generation had terrific opportunity, and he believes they have to make certain that this next generation has something close to an equivalent opportunity. “I’m a capitalist – you can’t share wealth until you create it; but once you create it, you should share it.”
Ron recalls bringing Sam here 38 years after he first arrived on campus. While he acknowledged much had changed, he noted the feeling was the same: “it had the same sense of purpose, of engagement, of wanting to be here that it did in my day. Everything Ryerson did, it did well. Whatever you were learning in the morning, you were applying in the afternoon. There is still a clear sense of the value of what this place provides. I never felt anything I did here was irrelevant.”
Through his generous gift to Ontario Graduate Scholarships at Ryerson, Ron is giving more students the opportunity to run with that sense of purpose.
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