Dean Ayers to head U of R

Ayers.
Photo by Dan Addison.

Read a statement from Dean Ayers.

Edward L. Ayers, the Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts & Sciences and Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History, has been named the University of Richmond’s ninth president and will take office on July 1, 2007.

A national and international search for Ayers’ successor will begin shortly, according to President John T. Casteen III.

“We will use the customary processes to identify prospects, recruit the strongest possible applicants, and make a good selection,” Casteen said.

Ayers became dean in 2001 and has been a member of the history faculty since 1980. He was named the National Professor of the Year in 2003 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Earlier this fall, Ayers received the University’s highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.

“As we search for a successor, Dean Ayers is a good model,” said Casteen. “We will need an established scholar with broad involvement in the whole range of disciplines contained within the College, with the capacity to manage a complex enterprise and to lead many different centers of excellence, with a solid record of commitment to diversity and equity, and with the capacity to raise a great deal of money in a relatively short time. This implies that the new dean will need great stamina and self-discipline, sympathy for many kinds of academic work, and the capacity to build strength in other people. Plus a lot more.”

Ayers’ election by the Richmond Board of Trustees was announced on Nov. 10 and culminated a national search that began in January.

“I have been at U.Va. for 26 years and have been blessed in countless ways by that association,” Ayers wrote in a letter to members of the University community. “My time as dean has only strengthened my love for this place. But the opportunity to serve as president of an institution dedicated to so many of the things to which I am devoted — undergraduate education, civic engagement, the integration of the liberal arts into a broad education — is compelling to me. The University of Richmond promises to be a wonderful new home.”

Ayers earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. One of the nation’s leading scholars on the American Civil War, Ayers has authored or edited nine books, one of which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Another, “In the Presence of Mine Enemies,” won the Bancroft Prize for a distinguished book in American history in 2004.

“Dean Ayers has been a visionary leader for the College of Arts & Sciences for the last five years,” U.Va. Rector Thomas F. Farrell II told The Cavalier Daily. “His leadership, particularly on the South Lawn project, was aimed at enhancing the undergraduate experience. He has been indefatigable in pursuing that goal for the benefit of faculty and, particularly, future students. He has been a fantastic leader at the University, and the University of Richmond's gain is our loss.”

“The College is strong and has grown more so during Dean Ayers’ term,” Casteen said. “A change of leaders always challenges organizations. I have great confidence in the College’s faculty and in its Foundation. The goal there is excellence, and that will continue to be the case.”