Schools

Rutgers University President to Step Down

Richard McCormick has been in charge of the state university's New Brunswick campus for nearly a decade.

NEW BRUNSWICK—Rutgers President Richard McCormick plans to leave the university presidency at the end of the 2011-12 school year, and return as a professor, he announced Tuesday.

McCormick, 63, has served as president since 2002, and is paid $550,000 to oversee the state university.

McCormick said he had been discussing his resignation with his wife, Joan, for about a year, and that his departure was not due to any negative factors or unfavorable headlines.

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"My longstanding and profound pride in Rutgers has grown ever stronger in the past month,'' McCormick said in a May 31 statement emailed to the Rutgers community.

Over the next year, he plans to focus on three goals, he said:

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  • Fundraising: Rutgers is currently in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, the largest attempt at fundraising the college has undertaken. Resulting funds will be used for scholarships and recruiting highly qualified teaching staff, among other things, according to a release from the college.
  • Advocating: McCormick touted the suggestions of the state Task Force on Higher Education, a group of appointees chaired by former Gov. Thomas Kean that recently released a study examining college and university education in the state, and offering suggestions for greater efficiency in those schools. Part of that efficiency involves a proposal to bring the Robert Wood Johnson University Medical School and School of Public Health into Rutgers, McCormick said.
  • Bond refinancing: McCormick said he was advocating for a bond referendum on the ballot in 2012, which if approved by voters, would supply funds to improve the facilities of colleges and universities in the state.

McCormick's 1-year-old daughter, Katie, chattered through a crowded press conference while her father answered questions from a room of reporters.

The scholar will take a one-year sabbatical after leaving the presidency before starting a teaching job.

McCormick said he was a scholar of American political history and could teach that, and was open to the idea of teaching higher education, if the graduate school of education desired him to do so.

He will be paid $335,000, making him the highest-paid professor at the university.

Gov. Chris Christie said in a prepared statement that he valued McCormick's contributions to the university.

"I wish Dick McCormick well and I look forward to working with him over the course of the next academic year as we continue implementing the recommendations of the Kean Commission on Higher education," Christie said. "I thank President McCormick for his service to the university as a whole and to the state of New Jersey."

Ralph Izzo, chairman of the Rutgers Board of Governors, said that the process for finding a new university president would involve a search committee, combing national candidates for "enthusiastic, accomplished leadership."

McCormick said his proudest moment as president was in 2006, at the end of a two-year process to consolidate the university campuses into a more unified Rutgers, which allowed students greater freedom to move between the programs at the different campuses, the biggest and most significant reorganization of the university in the last 25 years, he said.

The reorganization also led to the creation of the School of Arts and Sciences, more opportunities for undergraduates to procure programs in research and honors, and more support for high performing students seeking scholarships and awards, according to a release from the university.


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