U.Va. names first female president

[Blue_Tires]

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia has named Teresa A. Sullivan as its new president, the first woman to fill that role.

The university's Board of Visitors on Monday unanimously elected Sullivan to succeed President John T. Casteen III. The 66-year-old Casteen will leave office Aug. 1 after 20 years as the school's seventh president.

More than 100 candidates were nominated for the job at one of the nation's top public institutions, founded in 1819. The 60-year-old Sullivan has served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan since 2006, and spent 27 at the University of Texas at Austin. Both also are regarded as among the nation's best public universities.

The university has granted Sullivan a five-year contract with compensation package not to exceed $680,000 annually.

"This is the only presidency for which I applied," Sullivan said at a news conference after the meeting. "This is really one of the jewels of higher education in the United States."

Sullivan, who grew up in Little Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss., earned her undergraduate degree at Michigan State University. She earned her master's and doctorate degrees in sociology from the University of Chicago and is known as a leading scholar in labor-force demography. A top challenge for Sullivan is to retain U.Va.'s educational quality in the face of declining state funding and growing costs, and she expressed concern about the financial difficulties faced by public colleges nationwide. In Michigan, she has grappled with that state's recession, which "started years ago," she said.

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