SCHENECTADY – Union College President Roger Hull, who led efforts to integrate the 210-year-old institution into the city's social and economic tapestry, will step down June 30. He intends to start a nationwide foundation to help grade-school children prepare for college, outside normal channels. Hull, 62, the college's 17th president, has served for 15 years. Before joining Union in 1990, he served for nine years as president of Beloit College in Wisconsin.
Gazette Photographer
Union College President Roger Hull stands on the college’s campus on Monday after announcing that he plans to leave the school.
He told Union's board of trustees over the weekend that he planned to step down.
“I've been a college president for 24 years. I've had as good a run as I possibly could,” he said during a Monday afternoon news conference at the college.
The board will immediately create a search committee to find his successor, said Frank Messa, co-chair of the college's “You Are Union” campaign.
“We are very sad to see him go. He has accomplished so much for the college,” Messa said. Hull will remain president through the end of the current academic year. His salary was reported at $290,000 annually. He lives on campus with his two high school-age children.
Hull plans to remain in the area but is interested in establishing a charitable foundation that will serve at-risk students across the country. He started a similar program while president of Beloit.
Town – gown catalyst
Union spokesman Bill Schwarz said, “It's fair to say that when Roger arrived, Union was very much the ivory tower. He will be most remembered for bringing the college into the community and for bringing the community into the college.”
In a phone interview, Union trustee Neil Golub said Hull “made some major changes in the quality of the college's education, in how it's run, in how it interacts with the community, in expanding its facilities and in bringing new students to the college.”
“He brought a process of change,” Golub said.
Hull integrated the college's liberal arts program with its technology program; increased the college's efforts to help students study abroad; and boosted undergraduate research.
Hull's strength is in the area of fund raising, Messa said. During Hull's tenure, the college's endowment tripled to $250 million; the college is in the midst of a $250 million campaign.
“With that endowment, Roger and the board have been able to accomplish many of the objectives he and the board set,” Messa said.
Seward Place effort
One objective was to spur renewal on the periphery of the campus. Through the Union-Schenectady Initiative he launched in 1998, the college pumped more than $26 million into Seward Place, Huron Street and Nott Street, neighborhoods west of the college.
The college bought and renovated more than three dozen buildings, converting most into student housing. The area is known as College Park.
The initiative also offers free tuition to the children of homeowners in the area, provided they keep their homes in good condition and the children meet academic standards. It also subsidizes mortgages of Union faculty who buy houses there.
The college last year also purchased the former Ramada Inn on Nott Street and transformed it into a residence hall for 230 students. Behind it sits a new lighted athletic field, which is open to the community. The rebuilding work made major improvements in an area on the rim of the campus that was once blighted and trouble-prone.
Hull launched the U-Start business incubator project in 1998. The project allows Union students to become entrepreneurs and test their business concepts in the academic environment.
Almost upon his arrival to Union as president Hull launched a community service program for incoming freshmen. Schwarz jokingly called it “mandatory volunteerism.”
The program exposes students to the community and “is a wonderful statement because so many students continue their service in the community,” Schwarz said.
Messa said fully 50 percent of the college's 2,100 students participate in community service projects.
In 1993, Hull and Golub formed Schenectady 2000. Its goal was to attract companies, create jobs and help revitalize the city.
Schenectady 2000 never reached its full promise, but it did help spur the creation of something far bigger: the Metroplex Development Authority. Along the lines Hull and Golub envisioned, the county Legislature petitioned the state government to create the local authority to float bonds for downtown projects. That was in 1998.
Metroplex has since served to attract more than $100 million in investment in the county, $70 million of that in downtown.
“What's going on today with Metroplex and [Chairman] Ray Gillen is the result of Schenectady 2000. This community has taken a big step forward,” Golub said.
Hull is reluctant to take sole credit for any of these initiatives. “We've done it,” he said, placing emphasis on “we.”
“We have a track record recognized around the world,” Hull said. “We've been able to build the institution but not on the backs of the staff. This was all done without layoffs.”
Hull made some enemies among alumni of the college's Greek-letter organizations in recent years as his administration took over several fraternity houses on campus for use as offices and dormitories.
During Hull's tenure, Union has taken steps to limit the influence of fraternities on campus social life, despite their unique place in the college's history. Union is known as “The Mother of Fraternities” because the first three – Kappa Alpha, Delta Phi and Sigma Phi – were founded at the college in the 1820s.
Foundation vision
Hull said the foundation which he plans to create will provide seed money to colleges and universities that want to establish an educational program for at-risk students. The program would use college students to teach fourth-graders a Latin-based curriculum in an after-school setting.
“I have the vision but I have no money,” he said. His Wisconsin program obtained outstanding results, he said, and he hopes to duplicate it nationwide.
He wants to establish the program on a small number of college campuses initially and then broaden the effort each year.
“The point is to take this and go national. It's the right idea at the right time. There's nothing like it in the United States,” Hull said.
Hull leaves Union with the distinction of serving the fourth-longest term of any president in the college's history.