University of Washington Office of News and Information
newsweb@u.washington.edu
Modified: November 20, 2007
newsweb@u.washington.edu
Modified: November 20, 2007
This has been a very difficult decision for me and my family. There are few jobs in the country for which I would even consider leaving the University of Washington, and Rutgers is one of them. I thought I had made the right decision when I withdrew my name earlier, but afterwards, I felt the strong pull of returning to Rutgers, where I grew up and where I taught for sixteen years. The more I thought about my previous decision, the less right it felt, in my head and in my heart.
It is very difficult to leave the University of Washington. It is a great university, one of America's best, and the people here have been wonderfully supportive of me and my family. I feel the administrative team and faculty have accomplished great things and set the University on a course to continue its great work in the 21st century. The University is filled with outstanding people, terrifically creative and innovative faculty, devoted staff, and brilliant students. The only thing standing in their way of accomplishing whatever they imagine is the steady decline in state funding, but I believe even that is solvable.
I want to express my thanks to everyone for their support and hope they understand my need to return home to Rutgers.
It is understandable that the pull of Rutgers would attract Dick McCormick to return to the place he grew up, where his parents had their careers, where he had his start as a professor and served as chair of the history department and dean of arts and sciences. It would naturally be hard for anyone to resist the call to return as president to his home university, though obviously, in withdrawing his name earlier from consideration, Dick tried to resist.
This University will miss his outstanding leadership. His seven years at the University of Washington were characterized by a culture of innovation, a commitment to diversity, a willingness to manage for change, revitalized communication with the University's many constituents, and significant aspirations for the future, all this in a time of severely constrained resources. The Board of Regents and the entire University community will aggressively continue Dick's dedicated efforts to represent the value of public higher education to the people of the State of Washington and to champion the cause of adequate State funding. Dick's highest priority-closing the gap between the per student funding the State provides to the UW and WSU and the public funding of our peer universities in other states-remains the top goal of the University of Washington. We wish Dick well in his new challenges at Rutgers and thank him for the boundless energy and the leadership he gave to our university.
The Board of Regents will be appointing an acting president and will begin the process of conducting a national search for the next president of the UW. This is one of America's premier public research universities, and we will be looking for leadership commensurate with its place among the best universities in the nation.