When Rick Levin leaves his post next year as Yale’s president, he’ll also leave behind one of the more grueling requirements of modern-day top higher-ed posts: continually asking rich people for big checks.
Levin was good at that part of the job. Remarkably good. From its $3 billion (upped to $3.89 billion) “Yale Tomorrow” campaign, to its new School of Management campus and residential colleges, the university has cleaned up on the donation trail under Levin’s 20-year stewardship. Even amid a recession.
Chiefs of colleges and professional schools are often heard to complain privately about the seemingly never-ending fundraising traveling they have to do in their jobs, squeezing out the intellectual mission that drew them to academia in the first place.
Not Levin. At least in an Independent interview after his announcement last week that he’s retiring next spring after 20 years. He called pitch duty “a fun part of the job.”
“I’ll actually miss that,” he said, “because I’ll miss the interaction with a lot of people who I think are terrific.”
Click on the play arrow to watch his full response.
