Shirley Strum Kenny announced today that she would step down next June as president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

During her 14 years at the helm, the university has grown substantially and earned a reputation as a research powerhouse. Ms. Kenny, who is 73, has also pushed a series of improvements on the formerly dreary campus.

Ms. Kenny, a native of Texas, has had a strong national voice on higher-education issues. In the late 1990s, after the death of Ernest L. Boyer, she succeeded him in leading a commission on undergraduate education convened by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 1998 the commission issued a landmark report that blasted universities for focusing on research at the expense of undergraduate education.

Some of Ms. Kenny’s more aggressive moves have drawn fire, such as the university’s purchase of a new campus in ritzy Southampton, N.Y. Her leadership was recently criticized by some faculty members. But Ms. Kenny, on whose desk sits a nameplate reading “Iron Magnolia,” also has many supporters, on the campus and among lawmakers and business leaders. —Paul Fain