 Crowell is primarily known for overseeing Trinity's movement to Durham, North Carolina and for reforming Trinity's curriculum, along with Joseph L. Armstrong, to be more in line with the German research university model.Toward that end Crowell persuaded the competing student literary societies to combine their libraries into a single college collection, where he personally catalogued the books and kept hours at a reference desk to encourage proper research methods.He also corrected the Latin in the college motto.