Release date: Nov. 14, 2002
Contact: Nancy Seideman, Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0640 or nseidem@emory.edu

Emory University President William M. Chace Announces Retirement

Emory University President William M. Chace announced on Thursday to the university's board of trustees that he intends to retire from the presidency. He said he will continue to serve until the search for a new president can be completed and a successor is in place. After stepping down, Chace will return to teaching at Emory following a year's sabbatical.

"By the end of this year," Chace said, "I will have served as a president for 15 years, first at Wesleyan University and then, for nine years, at Emory. Those years have brought deeply rewarding intellectual challenges and wonderful collegial friendships. The presidency of Emory, in particular, has been the source of great professional satisfaction and personal enjoyment. For my wife, JoAn, and me, it has been a wonderful chapter in our life together, one made up of new friendships and splendid opportunities to learn and to grow. But it is time for me to resume, while I can, the career that attracted me to the academy in the first place—the life of teaching and scholarship.

"I look forward to exercising more fully the habits of mind that shape the life of the scholar and teacher, habits I once had learned by heart but now must fashion anew. In the meantime, I will continue to do all I can to help maintain Emory’s remarkable, ascendant trajectory and to build on the extraordinary strengths of this institution."

Emory Board Chairman Ben F. Johnson III, a university alumnus and managing partner of the law firm of Alston & Bird, said, "Emory has been immeasurably blessed by the service of Bill and JoAn Chace. Their leadership has taken the university to a higher plane.

"Admission to the Association of American Universities in 1995 and hosting the AAU at Emory last month; the dramatic increase in sponsored research; a tremendous expansion of the university’s physical campus under a design plan sensitive to the quality of life, sacred spaces and environmental sustainability; support for the arts focusing the attention and resources of the university behind the new Schwartz Center; excellent appointments too numerous to list; increased international engagement; a complete sensitivity to the delicate ecology of a university; and total fidelity to the central mission of teaching and learning—all of these are the legacy of Bill and JoAn Chace," said Johnson. "While we prepare for a period of leadership transition, we will also be honoring and celebrating this very rich legacy."

A search committee will be formed in the weeks ahead to begin the work of finding Chace’s successor.

Since the beginning of Chace’s presidency in July 1994, Emory has developed a campus master plan and undertaken more than $1 billion in construction. All of the academic deans, as well as many other senior officers of the administration, have been appointed with his guidance during his tenure. Sponsored research in the past eight years has risen from $118 million to $277 million. After overseeing the successful completion of the university’s last capital campaign—which ended in 1996 after raising $420 million—Chace has helped to raise more than $1 billion in additional gifts to endowment and operations. Emory’s dramatic rise among private research universities was symbolized by its admission to the Association of American Universities in 1995––the last private institution to be admitted to this prestigious group of the nation’s top research universities.

Chace embraced the vocation of scholar in the 1960s while teaching on a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship at historically black Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he was on leave from graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. For 20 years, from 1968 to 1988, he taught in the English department at Stanford University. He served as associate dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford beginning in 1981 and as vice provost for academic planning and development starting in 1985.

The Stanford Alumni Association honored him in 1986 with the Richard W. Lyman Award for extraordinary academic leadership inside and outside the classroom. Chace received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford, and he holds honorary degrees from Amherst, Williams and Union colleges.

While serving as Emory’s president and a tenured professor in the English department, Chace has taught courses on James Joyce, Shakespeare, Melville, and modern fiction and nonfiction. The author of two books, "The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot" and "Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics," Chace also has written many articles and reviews, edited several anthologies and essay collections, and continued to contribute to scholarship.

• Sponsored research in the past eight years has risen from $118 million to $277 million.

• Emory has expanded partnerships with the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia Cancer Coalition.

• The university has undertaken more than $1 billion in construction, including construction of the Whitehead Biomedical Research Building (the first facility in the Southeast certified by the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), Emerson Hall physical sciences building, the recently opened Mathematics and Science Center, the Vaccine Research Center, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, Nell Hodgson Woodruff Nursing School, Goizueta Business School, the redevelopment of Emory Crawford Long Hospital (the state’s largest hospital construction program), an Emory Medical School building at Grady Memorial Hospital, and current construction of Winship Cancer Institute and the redevelopment of the Clairmont Campus into a living-learning community.

• Emory University commits more than $1 million annually to an aggressive alternative transportation program to alleviate traffic congestion and improve air quality.

• Following the successful completion of the university's last capital campaign--which ended in 1996 after raising $420 million--more than $1 billion in additional gifts to endowment and operations have been raised.

• Admission to the Association of American Universities–the last private institution to be admitted to the group of the nation’s top research universities. 1995

• Emory hosts President Clinton’s Southern economic summit. 1995

• Appointment of Nobel laureate for literature Wole Soyinka as Woodruff Professor of the Arts. 1996

• Adoption of a comprehensive campus master plan to responsibly guide the university’s growth and development in future decades. A major goal of the plan is to create a walking campus, replacing cars and concrete with green spaces and walkways. 1997

• Acquisition of the former Georgia Mental Health Institute property to create the university’s Briarcliff campus and a biotechnology development center in collaboration with Georgia Tech. The latter, EmTech Biosciences, is designed to nurture biotechnology startup companies based on research at Georgia universities. 1998

• Visiting professorship by retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. 1998-2000

• Visits by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1987, 1995 and 1998, capped by the signature of a formal affiliation with Drepung Loseling Monastery, Tibet’s ancient seat of scholarly activity, exiled to southern India.

• As a result of Emory's efforts and success at carefully planned growth and alternative transportation initiatives, U.S. Senator Max Cleland selected the university as the site for a field tour of the U.S. Senate Smart Growth Task Force. 1999

• President Bill Chace received the 2000 Pacesetter Award from the Clean Air Campaign in recognition of his leadership role in alleviating traffic congestion and improving air quality.

• Hosting the Association of American Universities presidents’ annual meeting in October 2002.

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