Professor Norlin taught Greek language and literature at the
University of Colorado from April 1899 to 1917. He was named acting president of the University of Colorado in May 1917 when university president
Livingston Farrand left for
France to head the
Rockefeller Foundation. Norlin was unanimously elected president on February 24, 1919 after Farrand resigned outright. During his tenure as President of the University of Colorado, he oversaw the redesign of the Boulder campus under the plans of noted architect,
Charles Zeller Klauder. The first building done in the university's distinctive Tuscan Vernacular Revival was completed in 1921. Fifteen other buildings in that style, including a men's and women's gymnasium, a student union,
a fieldhouse, a library, and student dormitories, were built during Norlin's presidency. Norlin is also remembered for resisting efforts by the
Ku Klux Klan, which had taken control of the
Colorado legislature in about 1922. The Klan insisted he dismiss all
Catholic and
Jewish faculty, but he resisted and guided the University through the years until 1926, when the Klan lost control of the legislature and governorship. During that period, the University subsisted on a
millage built into the state constitution; its budget was cut to zero. By appointment of
Columbia University, Norlin spent the 1932–33 year as Theodore Roosevelt Professor of American Life and Institutions at the
University of Berlin. After his time in
Germany, he spoke and wrote articles warning of the dangers of
Nazism and
antisemitism. He was a Weil Lecturer at the
University of North Carolina in 1934 and was also a trustee of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. During Norlin's tenure, the University of Colorado saw its student population more than triple, from 1,278 in 1917 to 4,501 in 1939. After twenty years as university president, Norlin was set to retire on June 30, 1939. However, due to controversy over the appointment of his successor, Norlin remained president until Robert L. Stearns succeeded him on September 8, 1939. ==Personal life==