Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California since 1991, plans to step down next August, the university will announce today.
"It's a time for fresh leadership," Mr. Sample, who will turn 69 this month, told the Los Angeles Times. "I don't mean to sound self-congratulatory, but we've had a good run. And so, why not quit while you're ahead?"
During Mr. Sample's 18 years as president, the Los Angeles institution has marked a number of milestones that have raised its academic prestige and improved its financial footing. Among them, according to information on the university's Web site, the value of Southern California's endowment increased from $460-million to a high of $3.7-billion in 2007, before the stock-market crisis last year. In 2003, the university completed a fund-raising campaign that collected $2.85-billion, then a record for a higher-education campaign.
Southern California has also attracted a number of nine-figure gifts, including two gifts totaling $220-million from the Annenberg Foundation, $175-million from George Lucas to endow the School of Cinematic Arts, $112.5-million from Alfred E. Mann to establish the Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering, and $110-million from the W.M. Keck Foundation for the school of medicine.
The university also moved to expand the faculty of its main undergraduate college under Mr. Sample, announcing in 2002 a three-year plan to spend $100-million to hire 100 "world class" senior faculty members over three years.
Mr. Sample told the Times that he was proudest of the improvements made in Southern California's undergraduate course offerings and the academic quality of its students, the latter achieved partly by cutting the size of the freshman class and increasing the selectivity of the university's admissions standards.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mr. Sample is also a tenured professor in Southern California's school of engineering and regularly teaches undergraduates, including a popular course called "The Art and Adventure of Leadership."
Molly Corbett Broad, who is president of the American Council on Education and a former president of the University of North Carolina, praised Mr. Sample as "a towering figure" in American higher education. "I think Steve is just about the perfect example of the benefits to a university that derive from long, continuous service by a leader," the Los Angeles Times quoted Ms. Broad as saying.
The university has also come in for some criticism during Mr. Sample's tenure. While it has been praised for civic engagement, particularly efforts to improve education, health, and safety in neighborhoods near its campus, some community activists complain that it has not built enough student housing, which has led to the rise of expensive apartments for students and the displacement of longtime neighborhood residents.
Southern California has also weathered an athletics scandal that resulted in NCAA penalties for academic fraud, and it has taken some lumps for its decision last year to shutter its German department.
Before coming to Southern California, Mr. Sample was president of the State University of New York's University at Buffalo.
He was diagnosed eight years ago with Parkinson's disease, but Mr. Sample told the Times that his illness was not a major factor in his decision to step down next summer. The university's Board of Trustees plans to launch an international search for a successor and hopes to name a new president by May.
Comments
1. jeff1 - November 02, 2009 at 10:12 am
USC has indeed come a very long way under Dr. Sample's leadership. Change is good for institutions of USC's character and reach. Penn State went through such a change before Dr. Spanier was brought in and his arrival really took Penn State to a new level again. Good luck to Dr. Sample as he moves on to other interests and best to USC as it transitions to new leadership and ambitions!
2. 22208563 - November 02, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Interesting article, all about fund-raising, about the bucks. Nothing about students educated, graduates or their accomplishments, Nobel/Pulitzer winners, research breakthroughs, regional economic development - specific civic engagement, and the like under President Sample's leadership.
3. 22286593 - November 02, 2009 at 02:48 pm
Steven Sample's most remarkable achievement at USC has been his ability to bridge various political, ideological, and parochial interests to support academic excellence, racial and ethnic diversity, and internationalization. The fact that a white, engineering professor turned administrator could become a tireless champion of affirmative action, ethnic studies, and liberal arts--when the entire state of California was in full retreat (certainly on affirmative action)--is an amazing testament to Sample's ability to lead. For those of us who have been in California for more than two decades, it is amazing to think that USC now admits more African American and Latino students into the law school than UCLA, that American Studies and Ethnicity Ph.D. program is perhaps the strongest ethnic/American Studies Ph.D. program in the country, and that scholars from Robin Kelly to David Lloyd call University Park and not Westwood their home. When he arrived at USC, Sample knew that USC's excellence in professional schools meant little in the way of academic respectability. His ability to get the relatively conservative corporate and alumni supporters of USC to foot the bill of building excellence and somehow avoid the pitfalls of partisan or identity politics has been absolutely masterful. As he departs, I'm sure there will be a lot of people who will criticize Sample, but for those who remember USC as the University of Second Choice in the 1980s, we know that Sample deserves credit for one of the most amazing turn around of a major American university with grace and charm.
4. wepstein - November 02, 2009 at 10:19 pm
A terribly overrated president. He did not do well at SUNY Buffalo but hit paydirt with the wealth of USC. If this is all that academia can provide for "leadership" then it might just ignore administration for the vagaries of faculty direction.