TROY — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson announced Friday she will retire next year after more than two decades at the Troy institution.
Hired in 1999, Jackson is one of the RPI’s longest-serving leaders. She will step down on July 1, 2022, she wrote in a memo to faculty and families.
RPI and “the Capital Region community welcomed me, Morris, and our son, Alan, into its family. We are deeply grateful for the support and friendship we have experienced throughout the years,” Jackson said. “I am extraordinarily proud of this university, and all that we have achieved working together, yet the time has come for the next chapter of my life and career.”
Jackson, 74, a physicist, was the former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jackson’s scientific breakthroughs helped earn her a National Medal of Science and led to the invention of technologies like the portable fax machine, touch-tone phones, solar cells, fiber optic cables, and caller ID.
Jackson is credited with transforming RPI into a “vibrant community, with significant investments in new and existing academic, research, and residential facilities.” On her watch, the university saw record numbers of student applicants and added a Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), the East Campus Athletic Village, and the Center for Computational Innovations.
Jackson is one of the highest-paid university presidents in the United States, earning a salary of $5.8 million in recent years. Jackson’s seven-figure salary and top-down management style have at times been a source of contention among students, as well as some dissident alumni and donors.
For years, she has drawn criticism from civil liberty groups who say her administration works overtime to quell dissent and free speech among students and faculty. In recent years, her administration moved to take control of the school’s student-run student union and hired police officers to film students protesting in order to identify them for disciplinary action. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group that promotes civil liberties on college campuses, even included RPI on its list of 10 worst campuses for freedom of expression.
Her management style has also been criticized by alumni who in 2019 sued the school’s alumni association for violating bylaws during board elections. The group of unhappy graduates claimed Jackson had allowed the school’s debt load to grow out of control — all while earning a top-tier salary (Jackson took a modest 5 percent pay cut last year to help address a financial shortfall caused by the pandemic).
During the height of the pandemic, however, RPI’s rigid COVID-19 testing and social distancing protocols, guided by infection data, managed to keep the disease largely off-campus.
“Navigating the university through the unprecedented, global pandemic this past year tested our courage, agility, and flexibility. We passed the test with flying colors,” Jackson wrote in her memo Friday.
For all her detractors, Jackson’s barrier-breaking achievements have earned her praise from around the globe and helped to raise RPI’s national and international profile. Under her tenure, RPI has become one of the most competitive engineering and scientific schools in the nationl
“This fall, we will enroll the most accomplished freshman class in our history,” she wrote. “Most importantly, we came together as one united and resilient university… We pushed the limits of our own potential, and we continue pushing forward to reach even greater heights of excellence.”
The school’s succession plan was not immediately known.
Bethany Bump contributed.
