DIOCESAN NEWS
02/26/10
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Teresa Sullivan named eighth president of UVA
     CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Teresa A. Sullivan, the University of Michigan’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and a leading scholar in labor force demography, will become the University of Virginia’s (UVA) eighth president on Aug. 1.
     Sullivan was valedictorian of the class of 1967 of Jackson, Miss., St. Joseph High School.
     Sullivan was unanimously elected by UVA’s Board of Visitors. University Rector John Wynne, who chaired the board’s Special Committee on the Nomination of a President, officially welcomed Sullivan to the university community, calling her “an extraordinary talent who brings to the university an enormous depth and breadth of experience in every aspect of public higher education.”
     Sullivan, 60, will succeed John T. Casteen III, who announced last summer that he will step down as president at the end of his 20th year.
Sullivan seamlessly combines all aspects of leading a major research university, Wynn said.      “Not only is she well versed in academic and student life, she knows the inner workings of the daily operations of a university, from finance and health care to athletics and how to support a second campus like the college at Wise. She also has experience in all areas of managing risk.”
     Sullivan, who joined the University of Michigan in 2006, also serves as its chief budget officer. She oversees $1.5 billion of Michigan’s $5.4 billion annual budget. She has 44 direct reports, including deans of 19 schools and colleges as well as the directors of many interdisciplinary institutes and centers. She serves on the board of the health system.
     Prior to going to Michigan, Sullivan spent 27 years at the University of Texas at Austin. She was named executive vice chancellor for academic affairs for the university’s system in 2002. In that role, she was the chief academic officer for the system’s nine academic campuses, with the president of each campus reporting to her.
     Sullivan said she was drawn to the University of Virginia because of its Jeffersonian values and traditions, its academic reputation, its powerful undergraduate student experience and its firm commitment to a public mission.
     “It is one of the truly great public universities in the country,” she said. “In fact, it is one of the great universities in the world.”
     Those who know Sullivan paint a consistent picture of her as a brilliant administrator and leader, outstanding scholar and teacher, and extraordinary collaborator. Wynne said those who interviewed Sullivan found her to be intellectually curious, creative, direct, analytical, results-driven and empathetic, a great communicator and listener – and good company.
     Sullivan was raised in the South during the time of desegregation – first in Little Rock, Ark., until she was 13, and then in Jackson, Miss., until she went to college. “My high school (St. Joseph) was the first in Mississippi to integrate,” Sullivan said. “We were all touched by those times. They were what led me to become a sociologist.”
     After graduate school at Chicago, she joined the University of Texas as a sociology instructor. She worked her way through the ranks of assistant, associate and full professor.      In 1990, she became chair of the sociology department. In 1994, she became vice provost and a year later was named vice president and dean of graduate studies. She has continued to teach and publish throughout her career. A prolific writer, she is the author or co-author of six books and more than 80 scholarly articles and chapters.
     “I have never stopped teaching or publishing – no matter what job I had,” she said. “But I think something will have to go when I become president.”
     Sullivan’s research now focuses on labor force demography with emphasis on economic marginality and consumer debt. She has served as chair of the U.S. Census Advisory Committee and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She graduated from the James Madison College at Michigan State University in 1970 and received her doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1975.
     Sullivan is married to Douglas Laycock, who will join the faculty of UVA’s School of Law.      The couple met at Michigan State when Laycock was president of the debate team that Sullivan wanted to join.
     Sullivan and Laycock have put down strong roots in each of the communities in which they have lived, she said. “We like to get involved, and to serve, in the local community. It’s important to us.”
     They have two sons. Joseph, 29, holds degrees from Hampshire College and Harvard Divinity School and is working on his Ph.D. at Boston University. John, 22, is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago.

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