SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT (publ. 6/17/21/2015, pg. A4)
A story incorrectly reported when Stanford University President John L. Hennessy plans to step down. The university announced last week he will leave the post in the summer of 2016.
STANFORD — John L. Hennessy, who established Stanford University as a red-hot center of innovation, announced Thursday that he will be stepping down after 15 years as the head of the renowned campus.
Hennessy, 62, made the surprise announcement at the university’s Faculty Senate meeting, saying he will depart in the summer of 2016 to return to research and teaching.
The university’s Board of Trustees will launch an international search for a successor in September. Provost John Etchemendy will not be a candidate for the position, but will stay on for up to one year to ease the transition of the next president.
“The time has come to return to what brought me to Stanford — teaching and research. Maintaining and improving this university is the work of many people, and I am deeply appreciative of the dedication of so many colleagues to Stanford and its students,” Hennessy told the Faculty Senate, where he received a long standing ovation.
As the first high-tech entrepreneur to lead a top research university, he has traveled easily between the rumpled world of technology — he is a pioneer in computer architecture who founded several companies — and the suit-clad world of philanthropy and fundraising.
The popular leader has presided over billions in gifts and dozens of new construction projects, establishing Stanford as a leader in global challenges, from human health and international affairs to environmental science and energy. He also created a visual and performing Arts District for the campus, making the campus a destination for Bay Area residents.
He is widely regarded as having created a new model for American college leadership, once the province of tweedy scholars. As the multimillionaire founder of the microprocessor company MIPS Computer Systems, he has sat on the boards of Google, Cisco Systems and Atheros, invested in elite venture capital funds such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital, and advocated for closer relationships between universities and industry to more rapidly bring academic discoveries to the public.
“His contributions have been unparalleled. He has articulated a vision for Stanford that is quite unique, in terms of directing the world’s most complex issues at Stanford … and delivering on that vision. He and John Etchemendy, together, did a truly exceptional job of putting Stanford in a leadership position.” said Steven A. Denning, chair of the Board of Trustees.
Former dean of the School of Medicine Dr. Phil Pizzo called him “one of the most extraordinary university presidents in the country. He is a person of incredible vision and remarkable integrity, with a real ability to bring faculty, students and staff together to solve big problems — to think big.”
“He transformed our whole landscape,” Pizzo said. “He elevated the entire university to one of the finest in the world.”
Hank Greely, director of Stanford’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, said “I disagreed with President Hennessy from time to time, but he has done an excellent job in the last 15 years of guiding Stanford both through threatening periods, like ‘the Crash’, and through the more subtle but no less difficult challenges of success.”
“He and Provost John Etchemendy are complementary personalities who have added up to more than the sum of their parts,” Greely said. “They have governed Stanford for about an eighth of its existence and will leave it in its strongest shape ever.”
Hennessy joined Stanford’s faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He became a professor in 1986. In 1996, Hennessy was named dean of the School of Engineering and in 1999, he was named provost, the university’s chief academic and financial officer.
With a base salary of about $775,000 a year, he lives in the president’s Hoover House with his wife, Andrea, who he met in his youth in Huntington, New York, while working as a stock clerk at the King Kullen grocery store. He cites Bill Hewlett and David Packard as two major sources of inspiration. “I manage by walking around,” he told the Mercury News. “It’s a page out of Dave and Bill’s old playbook.”
“We will miss him,” Denning said. “There are few people who have his vision, his energy, his drive and combination of skills — as a respected academician, seasoned entrepreneur and extraordinary leader.”
Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098. Follow her at Twitter.com/Lisa M. Krieger.
