UC President Mark Yudof will step down on August 31, 2013, and teach law school. (Source: University of California).

UC President Mark Yudof volition step down on August 31, 2013, and teach police school. Credit: University of California

Mark Yudof bid a formal goodbye Wednesday to the University of California. The outgoing UC president's remarks at the Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco were function give thanks you, part reflection and, emblematic of his position every bit head of leading university system, part lecture.

He made his comments i twenty-four hours earlier the regents are set to vote on the nomination of U.S Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano every bit Yudof'southward successor. Napolitano is scheduled to attend Thursday'due south Lath of Regents coming together.

Yudof wove the theme of finding balance throughout his talk. He quoted liberally from former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, during his final days in office said that at that place will ever be crises, just skillful leaders must avoid impulsive and costly action seen as "the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

The "critical yet never-ending task earlier whatever UC president is to residue what Eisenhower called the 'actions of the moment' confronting those of the future, all while accommodating progress," Yudof said. "Eisenhower calls this 'proficient judgment'—I phone call information technology 'reflective evolution.'"

He compared the unlikely confluence of people and actions that came together to create the University of California to paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould's description of human evolution equally a "staggeringly improbable series of events, sensible in enough in retrospect and discipline to rigorous explanation, but utterly unpredictable and unrepeatable."

Yudof acknowledged that "like any establishment, UC must change or deteriorate," but he exhorted the regents and other to "preserve the fundamental attributes of what make this university great."

During his five years as president, Yudof shepherded the university through a number of crises that threatened to upend administrations and erode the quality of pedagogy in a arrangement once hailed as a model for the nation.

Nigh severe was California's massive debt that cutting the state'south funding to UC past $900 million over the past 5 years and saw a doubling of tuition from $5,400 to $11,160 per twelvemonth.

Yudof has a lengthy résumé in administration and academics. Before arriving at UC in June 2008, he served every bit chancellor of the University of Texas organisation, president of the University of Minnesota and every bit a law professor and dean of the University of Texas at Austin law schoolhouse. When his tenure officially ends on August 31, he plans to return to the classroom and teach at UC Berkeley Law Schoolhouse.

"This is a astounding establishment," Yudof said. "Information technology gives me tremendous hope for the future of California and for the hereafter of higher educational activity. I concord neat confidence in the university that my successor will inherit. And I wish my successor well."

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