Why Rudd is stepping down
U of M president set 10-year limit on term
As the pandemic upended the University of Memphis, it brought a certain kind of pause for outgoing president M. David Rudd. h The selfimposed, 10-year clock on his tenure was running out. And though he’d been mulling a departure plan for the last couple of years, the pandemic proved an inflection point, a time to assess both how he was balancing personal demands and how the university would navigate a path forward. He realized it was time for someone new to chart the university’s next 10 years.
Holidays always came and went with university business to attend to, part of a “24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year” presidency that Rudd led with his compass set to U of M’s core values. For that, he doesn’t look back on what might have gone differently.
“I really, frankly, like to look forward,” Rudd said. Aligning to those values, more often than not, Rudd believes, led to success. “I would tell you that’s been a part of the growth and vitality of the university,” he said, “is a recognition of why we exist and a commitment to that core mission and identity.”
Leaving the helm by May 2022, an announcement Rudd made last week, is admittedly a year earlier than it might have been had it not been for the pandemic, he said.
But poised to obtain a top Carnegie research designation of R1 later this year, Rudd believes U of M will be an attractive ship to helm by the fall of 2022. The designation will cap his tenure, marking a culmination of several programs and initiatives he’s been pleased to see through.
“As I looked at it, it was more clear that over the course of this coming year, that we could wrap those projects up...and it just seemed like a good, appropriate time for a transition,” Rudd said. “The more I thought about it, (I) didn’t want to really make an investment of the time and energy to shape the next decade for the university. That wasn’t consistent with what my original intent was when I took the position. So this was a good time to do that.”
Searching for a new president will be a first for the university’s board of trustees, which began governing separate from the Tennessee Board of Regents in early 2017, about halfway through Rudd’s tenure. With a successor in place, Rudd will take an international sabbatical before returning to the university in 2023 as a distinguished professor of psychology.
An announcement from Rhodes College that President Marjorie Hass would depart this August, made about a week before Rudd’s announcement, was coincidence, he said.
Most university presidents stick with the job for about six and a half years, an average that has dwindled over the last couple of decades, as many in higher education say that the political and financial pressures on administrations have increased, The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported. Diversity of college presidents has increased somewhat in the last decade, but still, the majority of people in the job are white and are men. At U of M, all but one of the former 12 presidents have been men, and none have been Black.
“Part of the idea of term limits, I think, nationally, is it provides opportunity for leadership to reflect the diversity of a country,” Rudd said. “And frankly, that the leadership at the university should reflect the diversity of the university in the broader community. And I hope that that happens.”
Trust built through Tiger support
During the interviews for the presidency, present U of M Trustee Cato Johnson who was then chairperson of the state’s higher education committee, was immediately impressed by Rudd, one of the final three candidates. Johnson ultimately recommended Rudd’s appointment.
“And in all honesty, he has been even more outstanding than I ever felt he would be,” Johnson said. “And I knew he would be exceptionally good.”
Successful presidents, Johnson told Rudd during the interview, will embrace what it means to be an urban research institution and embrace the diversity of the student body, which include many students who are the first in the family to attend college. That means recognizing how and where, in many senses of the words, the U of M fits in to Memphis.
“David Rudd has embraced that,” Johnson said.
Also a first-generation college student, Rudd paid for his undergraduate at Princeton University with an ROTC scholarship, also working in the school’s dining hall. After obtaining master and doctorate degrees at the University of Texas, Rudd served as a division psychologist in the 2nd Armored Division through the end of The Gulf War. His psychology research focuses on veterans and mental health, and he wants to see the last portion of his career dedicated to clinical research. Rudd’s yearlong sabbatical will include some academic research in Europe and Japan.
Although a Texas-born outsider, Rudd took the right steps to earn community trust and respect through his presidency, Johnson said. Publicly, Rudd supported collegiate athletics, watching teams prosper and bringing alum Penny Hardaway to coach men’s basketball.
That included the support of Hardaway and star player James Wiseman at the start of the electric 2019 season that was zapped by an NCAA investigation. Wiseman’s mother accepted $11,500 from Hardaway before he was the U of M coach but after he was a significant athletics booster. The NCAA ruled Wiseman ineligible, but after obtaining a temporary restraining order in Shelby County, he played for three games. The infractions case is now being examined by the Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
Rudd said the university would share the findings when they are available, but that he does not know the investigation timeline or what the impacts might be.
Outside of athletics, Rudd also took the time to gather with diverse groups in Memphis, said Johnson, the trustee. To succeed, a U of M president must embrace the city in those ways, Johnson said, as the president would embrace all students.
“In other words, you must want to be here,” Johnson said.
Search for the next president begins
The next search will need to be thorough, deliberate and diverse, Johnson said. As newly elected chairperson, trustee Doug Edwards appointed trustee Carol Roberts to chair a search committee. The board will also compose a larger advisory committee and employ a national search firm.
A decisive, direct and passionate leader, Rudd, through his tenure, has made a U of M presidency more attractive, said trustee Brad Martin, who served as interim president for the year while Rudd was provost at U of M. To build on what the university has, the board will need to find a leader “who can not only sustain the moment, but build on it and take the university to yet another level,” Martin said.
“Clearly our fate, if you will, as a university, is very much tied to the city of Memphis and the community in which the university operates,” Martin said. “And I believe that community very much needs what the university brings. So I think that it will be a leader that understands that this is an urban institution, with enormous ties, opportunities and responsibilities to the geographic area.”
It was Rudd’s collaboration that made him an effective leader, Edwards said, and the next president should also value collaborating with faculty, staff, students and the community. The specifics of the search are still being ironed out.
Edwards has seen gains the university has made in student success, in terms of graduation and retention. Rudd pointed out progress made in narrowing achievement gaps for U of M’s Black male students in particular: What was a 20% gap between graduation rates of the university’s Black males and other students when Rudd started has shrunk to 10%.
“That was entirely a function of financial resources, and simply allowing students adequate resources to have time to dedicate to school,” Rudd said. “And as a result, they perform dramatically better.”
Philosophies of affordability and student resources are among his top contributions, he said.
He also grew U of M’s out-of-state students as well as online students through U of M Global.
“Anecdotally, the (academic) progress that we’ve made...i think are all maybe not quite as visible as buildings and bridges and that sort of thing...but they’re just as important, perhaps more important, because they focus on students,” said Edwards, the board chair. “And that’s what David (Rudd) was all about.”