A&M president stepping down next spring
Texas A&M University President Michael Young will retire next spring and then teach in the school’s government and law schools, he announced in a letter Wednesday.
Young, who has been president since 2015, will officially retire May 31 and will become director of A&M’s Institute for Religious Liberties and International Affairs within the Bush School of Government and Public Service, the Texas Tribune reported.
Young said he and his wife, Marti, have been discussing retirement for more than a year.
“We concluded that, after almost a quarter-century of serving in senior academic leadership roles and an increasing desire to turn back to topics that occupied much of my previous career, this would be our last year,” Young said in the letter.
As A&M’s president, Young said, he strived to give the university “an international reputation” by expanding research and fundraising efforts for education while maintaining the university’s mission as a land grant institution.
Under Young’s leadership, A&M raised $4 billion in the Lead by Example fundraising campaign, which funded dozens of faculty chairs, professorships and fellowships and hundreds of student scholarships.
The university also has grown physically, establishing a new School of Innovation and a teaching site in Washington, D.C., which will host its first classes this spring, and adding nearly 2 million square feet of space to the College Station campus — much of it for new academic and student services buildings.
Student retention also increased, with the six-year graduation rate jumping from 79 percent to 82 percent and enrollment from 62,185 students in 2014 to more than 71,200 this fall.
Young said he also has aimed to use the challenges the university has faced as opportunities for improvement. The pandemic, he said, has been a prime example, prompting the university to build upon its existing technology and approaches to research and the classroom.
“It’s been a great privilege to lead this great university,” Young said.
He said that although he will miss the “intensity of the work” and engaging with extraordinary senior leaders such as A&M System Chancellor John Sharp, “I’m at heart a professor and an academic teacher.”
As director of A&M’s religious liberties and international affairs institute, Young said he’ll capitalize on his experience as an activist, government adviser and professor within the related fields by exploring the intersection of the religious freedoms countries provide and international relations, including how people define their own lives and create their own spiritual and moral framework.
“I’ve felt the tug to get back to that, and I’m excited about the opportunity to engage,” Young said.