University of Michigan News Service – UM News

ANN ARBOR—The Regents of the University of Michigan, in a unanimous 8-0 vote, today (May 29) elected Mary Sue Coleman as the 13th president of the University. Coleman has served as president of the University of Iowa since 1995 and is a professor of biochemistry in Iowa’s College of Medicine and professor of biological sciences in the College of Liberal Arts. In nominating Coleman, Regent Laurence Deitch highlighted her outstanding academic credentials and accomplishments, calling her "a national leader in higher education." Coleman, he said, "was quite simply the best candidate in an extraordinary field and we are fortunate to have her." "My entire career has been spent at some of the nation’s finest public universities," Coleman said. "The presidency of the University of Michigan is the pinnacle of public higher education. I am looking forward to this opportunity to work with the faculty, staff and students of this great university." Coleman’s selection brings to a close a six-month search. The Regents, acting as the Presidential Search Committee, chose Coleman from among a pool of candidates identified by a Presidential Search Advisory Committee. The 16-member advisory committee was chaired by Rackham Dean Earl Lewis and included nine additional faculty members from the Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn campuses and two staff members, two students and two alumni. Coleman’s term begins Aug. 1. She will succeed B. Joseph White, who has served as interim president since Jan. 1. Under Coleman’s leadership at Iowa, the university increased research funding from $178 million to over $300 million, and increased total annual giving from $82 million to $172 million. She also oversaw major construction projects in liberal arts, medicine, engineering, biology, fine arts, honors center, career center, athletics and recreation, and parking. In addition to the presidency of Iowa, Coleman has held posts as provost and vice president for academic affairs (1993-95) at the University of New Mexico, and vice chancellor for graduate studies and research (1992-93) and associate provost and dean of research (1990-92) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served for 19 years as a member of the biochemistry faculty and as a Cancer Center administrator at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where her research focused on the immune system and malignancies. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine in 1997, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She co-chairs the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance. Her extensive leadership positions in higher education include serving on the Association of American Universities (AAU) executive committee, the American Council on Education (ACE) board of directors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) board of directors, and the Knight Commission. She also has served on the board of trustees of Grinnell College; board of trustees of the Universities Research Association; ACE Task Force on Teacher Education and Commission on Minorities in Higher Education; Business-Higher Education Forum; Imagining America President’s Council; AAU Task Force on Research Accountability; NCAA Standards for Success Advisory Board; and Presidents Leadership Group of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention. Coleman earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Grinnell College and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina. She conducted postdoctoral work at North Carolina and at the University of Texas at Austin. She is married to Kenneth Coleman, a political scientist specializing in Latin America. They have one son, Jonathan, who is a portfolio manager for the Janus Capital Corporation in Denver, Colo. During the Regents meeting, Deitch praised the Presidential Search Advisory Committee for its extraordinary work. The advisory committee, which he described as a "broad-based group of committed and wise University citizens," met formally 15 times and spent many additional hours on research in considering the more than 200 nominations that were submitted. Deitch, who chaired the Presidential Search Committee, noted that electing a president is the board’s most important task. "We took this enormous responsibility as seriously as one can undertake any endeavor," he said. "This is the one moment when we most definitively act on our commitment to be good stewards for the University’s future." He also thanked Interim President White and his wife, Mary D. White. "From the day that we asked Joe to assume the presidency on an interim basis, he and Mary have poured their hearts and souls into the myriad responsibilities that are the president’s job," Deitch said. "Joe not only kept the University running, but enabled it to move forward with impressive momentum." Deitch noted that the University will offer a more formal recognition to Joe and Mary prior to the completion of his tenure. Founded in 1817, the University of Michigan has been the national model for the large public university for more than a century. With a diverse campus population of more than 53,000 students and 5,200 faculty, it has 19 schools, colleges, and divisions in Ann Arbor, four in Dearborn, and four in Flint. The U-M’s total 2001-2002 operating budget for all three campuses is $3.8 billion. Its research expenditures – more than $545 million in fiscal year 2000 – are the highest among public universities in the United States. The U-M’s endowment was valued at $3.5 billion as of in gifts, surpassing for the second year in a row the $200 million mark in fundraising. The U-M has 424,000 living degree holders, the largest alumni body of any college or university. A downloadable high-resolution photo is available online here. Read a letter from Regent Laurence Deitch to the campus community here.