COLUMBUS, Ohio—Former Ohio State University president Gordon Gee is leaving Vanderbilt University to return to Ohio State as president, a position he held for most of the 1990s.
Gee made the announcement to Vanderbilt University staff Wednesday in an open letter obtained by The Associated Press. Trustees at Ohio State, the nation’s largest university, are expected to announce the selection of Gee as president at a board meeting Thursday, according to a person familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“This was by far the most difficult professional decision that I have ever made,” Gee said in the statement addressed to “Dear Colleagues.”
Gee, known for his dapper bow-ties, devotion to OSU’s football program and popularity with students, said he was following his heart and returning to a place he considered home. Gee was popular enough in the state to be briefly discussed as a Democratic candidate for governor.
“Over the past several weeks, members of the University Board and the University family have done everything possible to make me feel valued and appreciated,” Gee said, hinting at the negotiations to keep him at Vanderbilt.
“I assure you that I do,” he wrote.
Gee had been speaking with Ohio State over the past several weeks and initially declined an offer but changed his mind in the past couple days, Vanderbilt spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said Wednesday. Gee’s selection at Ohio State was first reported Wednesday in the online edition of The Columbus Dispatch.
Ohio State University officials would not comment. A message was left with trustee chairman Gil Cloyd. No details of Gee’s compensation were released, but his price tag for returning to Ohio State was expected to be hefty.
Gee, who earned a $232,000 salary at Ohio State in 1997, made about $1.2 million at Vanderbilt in 2004-05—including a salary of $905,296 and other pay and benefits—according to a survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Departed OSU president Karen Holbrook, who resigned after five years, earned a salary of about $475,000.
The survey found salaries rising at public and private universities around the country. In June, the Arizona Board of Regents gave Arizona State University President Michael Crow a 25 percent raise, upping his salary and benefit package to more than $720,000 a year.
Gee, 63, served as Ohio State president from 1990 to 1997 before leaving for a short stint as president at Brown University. He became chancellor at Vanderbilt in 2000. He also served previously as president of the University of Colorado from 1985 to 1990 and West Virginia University.
Gee is often on the job market for university positions. In 1995, while at Ohio State, he accepted the presidency at the University of California, then backed out a day before his confirmation.
He expressed great enthusiasm for the job at Brown, saying it would be the last president’s job he intended to hold, then jumped to Vanderbilt after only two years, saying Brown wasn’t a good fit.
Gee’s decision to return full-time to a previous president’s job is rare among candidates for such positions, said Claire Van Ummersen of the Washington, D.C.-based American Council on Education.
Gee represents the new face of college presidents who must spend much of their time fundraising and networking with outsiders, said Robert Perry, an Ohio State physics professor and chairman of the university’s faculty council.
“You have to have someone who has enormous amounts of energy and has lots of time and lets the people who are involved in the day-to-day workings of the university do what they need to do and provide the support that they need,” Perry said Wednesday. “Most people feel Gee did a pretty good job at that.”
Gee was a fundraising whiz at Vanderbilt, completing a $1.25 billion campaign for construction money two years ahead of schedule and raising the goal to $1.75 billion. He also increased the university’s endowment by almost 50 percent to more than $3 billion.
But he also generated controversy when he disbanded Vanderbilt’s athletics department, saying athletics had become too separate from the rest of the university.
In September, the university’s governing board tightened financial oversight of its chancellor after lavish spending at Gee’s school-owned historic mansion, according to a published news report.
The decision by the Board of Trust to create a new committee to review Gee’s spending was detailed in a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The school paid $6 million to renovate Braeburn, the mansion in the upscale Oak Hill neighborhood south of Nashville where Gee and his wife lived, according to the article. The university also pays $700,000 annually for frequent parties and a personal chef at the mansion.
Gee’s first wife, Elizabeth, died of cancer in 1991 while he was at Ohio State. In February, Gee announced he and his second wife, Constance, a professor he met at Ohio State, were divorcing.
Gee was not immune to controversy at Ohio State. He raised eyebrows in 1992 when he called the 13-13 tie after the annual Ohio State-Michigan football game “one of our greatest wins ever.”
Gee launched large building projects while Ohio State president, including a new arena and a renovation of Ohio Stadium. When he jumped to Brown he said it was hard to leave projects midstream.
“I just hope they invite me back when they’re finished,” he said in 1997.
Ohio State’s Columbus campus had 51,818 students during the past school year—the highest enrollment nationally at a public university. Vanderbilt’s enrollment is about 6,300 students.
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Associated Press writers Mark Williams in Columbus, Ohio, and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.
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