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President Sonnenschein decides seventh year will
be his last
President Hugo F. Sonnenschein has announced that his seventh year
as Chicago’s president will also be his last. On June 30, 2000,
he will return to teaching and research as a professor in economics
at the University.
In a June 3 letter to the University community, the 58-year-old
Sonnenschein gave two reasons for his decision to step down next
summer: “First, I have come to feel that it is time for another
president, one who is less a symbol of change and who has less reason
to initiate change, to carry the momentum forward. Second, in order
to sustain the aggressive percentage increases in fund-raising that
we have achieved, we will need to begin a new University-wide fund-raising
campaign.” That campaign, he said, “should bear the stamp—and
be viewed as the work and accomplishment—of the twelfth president
of the University of Chicago.”
In a joint statement, Howard G. Krane, JD’57, outgoing chair
of the University’s Board of Trustees, and incoming chair Edgar
D. Jannotta (see story, page 15) stressed the board’s commitment
to initiatives begun during Sonnenschein’s presidency, specifically
noting its intention “to support unequivocally President Sonnenschein’s
initiatives to increase the size of the College over a 10-year period
while preserving the quality of undergraduate education and the
excellence of our students.”
Calling Chicago’s eleventh president “a dedicated and
innovative leader,” Krane and Jannotta said, “It has been
a privilege to work with him, and we look forward to continuing
this work during the coming year and to seeing the benefit of his
initiatives for many decades to come.”
While some of those initiatives have been criticized, Sonnenschein
told the Maroon the criticism had no bearing on his decision to
step down. “You have to have a certain amount of willingness
to take criticism, and I think it has been very well-intentioned
and very deeply felt,” he said. “But we’re trying
to achieve things that we’re convinced—and the majority
of the community is convinced—are the right things to do.”
In the six years since he became the University’s president
in 1993—after serving as provost of Princeton University and
dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania—Sonnenschein
has moved to substantially improve Chi-
cago’s financial health, its facilities, and its public profile,
especially among prospective students. He launched a plan to gradually
increase the size of the College at the same time that the faculty
revised its curriculum, and he instituted the first campus master-planning
process in 30 years.
An economist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
Sonnenschein raised sharply the expectations for fund-raising from
U of C alumni and friends; the third year of his presidency saw
the completion of the U of C’s five-year Campaign for the Next
Century, which raised $676 million—the largest campaign in
the University’s history—to support student aid, research,
and facilities. During his tenure, the University has also revamped
its admissions efforts, resulting in an increased number of applicants
with higher SAT scores, and has earmarked substantially greater
resources to constructing new facilities and to improving the quality
of campus life.
The search process for a successor to Sonnenschein will begin
this summer. Appointments to both the trustees search committee
and the faculty advisory committee were expected to be announced
in early July, and all alumni and other friends are encouraged to
submit nominations.—M.R.Y.
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