University Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Richard Linton announced last week that he plans to resign by the end of June 2011.
Linton, who came to the University in 2000, stated that he is leaving to explore other career opportunities and to provide an avenue for the University to bring a fresh perspective to the school’s administration.
“About a year ago, I decided that it would be an appropriate time for me to step aside and for the University to have a change in leadership in the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies,” Linton said in a press release. “I’ve waited until now to make my intentions known because of other administrative-level searches and key leadership changes.”
Since Linton’s arrival, the University’s licensing revenue from innovation and research programs has grown 20-fold to $7.1 million in 2009. This places the University among the top 25 institutions in the nation in terms of fiscal return on research expenditures.
During his tenure as vice president, Linton helped engineer major advancements in the University’s research programs. In that time, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies nearly doubled in size, with the University adding 14 of the 33 interdisciplinary centers and institutes that currently exist. These projects, such as the Brain, Biology and Machine Initiative and the Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories, are responsible for bringing in more than $200 million in state, federal and private funding for things like facilities upgrades and developing new programs.
“It is satisfying for me to leave knowing that the UO has seen increasing research accomplishments by its faculty, including sustained growth in sponsored research funding, interdisciplinary research initiatives and innovations supporting technology transfer and development,” Linton said. “I am deeply grateful for our faculty, staff, students and my administrative colleagues who are directly responsible for these advances.”
Linton’s impact is not only limited to the University. Despite the state’s struggling economy, companies associated with University research projects saw significant expansion in the last five years, reporting more than $26 million in revenue and creating more than 240 jobs last year.
“Rich Linton has had a dramatic impact on the UO’s research enterprise and interdisciplinary initiatives during the past decade,” University Senior Vice President and Provost Jim Bean said in the same press release. “Rich has been instrumental in providing critical support of faculty recruitment and retention, graduate education, interdisciplinary centers and initiatives, research infrastructure, multi-institutional partnerships and technology transfer. He is one of the longest serving senior research officers at the same institution in the AAU, and we have benefited immensely from that tenure.”
Bean stated that a nationwide search for a new Vice President of Research and Graduate Studies would begin shortly.
Before coming to the University, Linton was the head of the University of North Carolina System’s research and international programs division and was also a chemistry professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
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