Off-topic: Hunter Rawlings to retire in 15 months

The Ithaca Journal reports that President Hunter Rawlings will retire in 15 months:

A Personal Message from President Rawlings
Updated 4 p.m., Friday, March 15, 2002

Hunter Rawlings
It is a privilege to serve as the president of Cornell, a great private university with a public mission. We have a distinguished faculty, a dedicated staff, a vibrant and diverse student body, and remarkably committed and generous trustees and alumni.

It is a particular pleasure to work with the Cornell community on a wide range of initiatives that make this an even stronger campus. Together we have completed a scholarship campaign that will enable Cornell to remain a place where "any person can find instruction in any study." We have transformed the living and learning experience of our freshmen with the implementation of the North Campus Residential Initiative, and we have created a new vision for West Campus, where five new residential colleges will soon give Cornell sophomores and juniors a stimulating intellectual environment.

We have begun a salary program for our faculty that will soon raise their compensation to a level equal to that of top universities in the United States. We have raised staff salaries and benefits to competitive standards, and instituted special increases for our lowest paid personnel.

We have defined a set of scientific priorities that will enable Cornell to remain at the forefront of American science, a national leader in such fields as nanoscale science, advanced material science, information science and bioinformatics, plant and animal genetics and neurobiology, and biomedical science at both the Ithaca campus and the Weill Medical College. We have instituted faculty seminars in the social sciences and humanities that bring together faculty members from all of Cornell's colleges for intellectual stimulation and collaboration.

Over the next 15 months I look forward to furthering these and many other initiatives at Cornell. I am blessed with a superb group of senior administrators led by Provosts Biddy Martin and Tony Gotto, and including all the vice presidents and Deans. At the end of June, 2003, I intend to retire from the presidency and, after a brief sabbatical leave, to take up a faculty position in the Classics Department on a full-time basis. I entered academia 32 years ago eager to pursue scholarship and teaching, and after 15 years as a university president, I will be just as eager to return to the faculty next year. For the past two years I have immensely enjoyed teaching in the Classics Department with my colleagues Hayden Pelliccia and Jeff Rusten, and engaging in weekly faculty seminars with Cornell humanists and social scientists. I am a fervent admirer of our faculty and students and look forward to joining them in the next stage of my academic life. Cornell is a great intellectual community.

Is there going to be a pairwise comparison ranking for candidates? How about we steal Randel back from Chicago.

There would be, but there'd be way to much controversy about the random cut-offs for PUC's (professors under consideration).