Levin to leave Yale

Yale University President Richard Levin will step down at the end of the current academic year, with his 20 years in the post the longest of any Ivy League president.

Yale did not immediately unveil its timeline and plans for a presidential search.

During Levin”™s tenure, Yale undertook its largest construction and renovation program since the Great Depression, expanding its campus by more than half to 17 million square feet, while soliciting $7 billion in gifts  including $3.4 billion for the “Yale Tomorrow” campaign between 2004 and 2011. Yale’s endowment today is $19.4 billion, up from $3.2 billion when he became president.

Yale also credited Levin with improving relations with the university”™s labor unions.

“We have successfully completed the Yale Tomorrow campaign, renovated all twelve residential colleges, reduced our budget in the wake of the financial crisis, secured the funding to construct the new School of Management facility, achieved critical mass on the West Campus, and ensured the successful launch of Yale-NUS College by recruiting outstanding leadership and the first cohort of faculty, and breaking ground on a new campus,” Levin wrote in an open letter to the Yale community. “Before us lie decisions about when to proceed with such projects as constructing the Yale Biology Building, facilities for science teaching, a new home for the School of Drama, and two new residential colleges, as well as renovating the Hall of Graduate Studies and Hendrie Hall.

PepsiCo Inc. CEO and Greenwich resident Indira Nooyi, a Yale trustee, called Levin “one of the world”™s great leaders,” in a statement released by Yale.

“He has been transformational in envisioning how a university should be a leading citizen in its home community, and he has boldly staked out how the leading universities should become global institutions,” Nooyi stated. “His example has been a guide for how universities around the world can have a much greater impact.”