PresBo: Five More Years+

ColumbiaURC
Sun, 07 Nov 2010 14:50:40 +0000

Hi, neat article recently in Bloomberg News about PrezBo and Columbia.

Columbia President Bollinger to Lead School for Five More Years
By Oliver Staley - Oct 20, 2010 3:51 PM ET

Lee C. Bollinger plans to continue as president of Columbia University until 2016.

Bollinger, 64, agreed with the board of trustees yesterday to a new contract that extends his term three years, William Campbell, board chairman of the New York-based university, said today in a telephone interview. Bollinger’s current contract was set to expire in 2012, said Campbell, who wouldn’t disclose the financial terms of the new deal.

Bollinger, who was hired in 2002, is leading Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion, a $6.3 billion project that will add 17 acres to the university in Harlem over the next 20 years. Under Bollinger, Columbia’s endowment increased to $6.5 billion as of June 30 from $4.2 billion in 2002 and the number of students applying to the Columbia College, the institution’s largest undergraduate unit, climbed 50 percent, to 21,273 in 2009 from 14,135 in 2002. The university was ranked No. 4 in the country this year by U.S. News & World Report magazine.

“We’re thrilled to have him committed for three more years,” said Campbell, the chairman of Intuit Inc., based in Mountain View, California. “He has done a magnificent job. We didn’t want any speculation” about Bollinger’s status.

Bollinger received $1.75 million in salary, benefits and other compensation from Columbia in 2008, the most recent year for which Columbia’s tax records are available.

‘Long Way’

Bollinger, a scholar of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment, graduated from Columbia Law School and serves on its faculty. He was president of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, from 1996 to 2002, and dean of Michigan’s law school from 1987 to 1994. He also worked as provost of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, from 1994 to 1996.

“Columbia has come a long way,” Bollinger said in an e- mailed statement. “But its potential for the future is even greater and I am extremely happy to be able to contribute to the realization of that potential.”

Bollinger is deputy chair of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one of three members appointed to represent the public.

Columbia, founded in 1754, has about 25,000 students. Graduates include President Barack Obama, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and Warren Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., who attended Columbia Business School. It is one of eight private schools in the northeastern U.S. that make up the Ivy League.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.net