Teresa Sullivan of the University of Michigan as new president University of Virginia
January 12th, 2010 | by |
Leaders of the University of Virginia on Monday elected Teresa A. Sullivan, provost at the University of Michigan, to succeed John T. Casteen III as president of Virginia’s higher education flagship.
Sullivan, 60, will start work Aug. 1 in a post regarded as one of the most visible in public higher education. Sullivan, the first female president of the school, will receive an annual compensation package of $680,000.
In introductory remarks Monday afternoon, Sullivan acknowledged the long shadow of the man she would replace. Casteen has led U-Va. for 20 years, a lengthy tenure for any college president, and has overseen its evolution into a public university supported largely with private funds.
“He will be a hard act to follow,” Sullivan said.
“I can’t imagine a better environment for a student, a scholar or an administrative leader,” Sullivan said of U-Va. “I look forward to being part of it. Let’s work hard.”
The Board of Visitors elected Sullivan as U-Va.’s eighth president in a unanimous vote just after 2:30 p.m. John O. Wynne, the university rector, said the panel was “confident that in Terry we have found a worthy successor” to Casteen.
Casteen, 66, has kept the 21,000-student university near the top of collegiate rankings during a two-decade span in which state support has dwindled from 26 percent of the university’s budget to 7 percent.
In the 2010 U.S. News rankings of national universities, U-Va. ranks 24th overall alongside UCLA; the two are tied for second among public institutions, behind the University of California at Berkeley.
Casteen emerged as a leader in the movement among academically elite public universities to protect their franchise amid declining state support by moving toward privatization. The university completed a $1.43 billion fundraising campaign in 2001, the second-largest sum ever collected by a state university at the time. He departs in the midst of a $3 billion campaign, the largest ever among public schools at the time of its launch in 2004.
Casteen came to U-Va. in 1961 as a 17-year-old freshman from Virginia’s Tidewater region and received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in English. He returned as dean of admission from 1975 to 1982, then served as Virginia’s secretary of education and president of the University of Connecticut before returning to U-Va. as president in 1990.
Casteen said when announcing his retirement last summer that managing his departure would be “complex, both because I have served longer than most presidents do” and because U-Va. must also replace several senior administrators who have worked there, some since “the late 1960s.”
Casteen’s compensation is $510,400, including bonuses, up from $147,000 in his first year.
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