By Jim Turner ©2024 The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — Less than two years into the job, University of Florida President Ben Sasse on Thursday announced he will step down July 31 because of his wife’s health.
“My wife Melissa’s recent epilepsy diagnosis and a new batch of memory issues have been hard, but we’re facing it together,” Sasse said in a prepared statement. “Our two wonderful daughters are in college, but our youngest is just turning 13. Gator Nation needs a president who can keep charging hard, Melissa deserves a husband who can pull his weight, and my kids need a dad who can be home many more nights.”
Sasse, who left a Nebraska U.S. Senate seat to become the university’s president, will move into a teaching role. The university’s Board of Trustees will name an interim president and prepare to search for a new leader.
Mori Hosseini, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in a statement that Sasse “left a lasting impact on the university.”
“Under his leadership, UF has continued to advance on the national and international stage, benefiting our students, faculty, alumni, community and state,” Hosseini said.
Sasse was confirmed as president by the state university system’s Board of Governors in November 2022 over the objections of some students and faculty members.
Sasse’s five-year contract included a $1 million base salary, with annual performance bonuses of up to 15 percent. He will forego a $1 million payout that would have been provided if he served the full five-year term.
Sasse holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Yale University. Sasse also worked as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and spent five years as president of Midland University, a small private school in Nebraska. A Republican, he was first elected to the Senate in 2014.
When he was confirmed as UF president, Sasse expressed a goal of creating an environment at the school of about 60,000 students to “live in community together” and to meet with various campus stakeholders. But he also suggested that some of the heartburn about his candidacy was sensationalized.
“There is always going to be, in a time as disrupted as ours, a sort of sensationalist tendency to take whatever an angriest moment is and pretend that it’s a representative moment. Those are not the representative moments,” Sasse said when confirmed by the board.
Sasse was hired under a then-new state law that allows presidential searches to be conducted in private. Under the law, names of finalists are made public at the end of searches.
Sasse’s selection as the lone candidate left the names of 11 other finalists undisclosed, drawing objections from many people on campus.
Sasse’s announcement Thursday came less than a week after Florida A&M University President Larry Robinson said he will step down after nearly seven years leading the state’s only historically Black public university.
Robinson’s action followed the school accepting and later rejecting a $237 million donation after questions arose about its legitimacy. The Florida A&M Board of Trustees will meet Tuesday and is expected to discuss a presidential search.
The student newspaper at UF, The Alligator, says that former president Kent Fuchs is expected to be named interim president.
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