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Tuesday, May 21, 2002

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Trustees at Carnegie Mellon University have reappointed Jared Cohon to a second five-year term as president, citing his vision and leadership as reasons for their decision.

The board vote took place during a meeting yesterday. In recent months, a campus panel had completed a favorable review of his performance.

"It's clear that Jared Cohon's strategic and collaborative leadership brings Carnegie Mellon's interdisciplinary and highly entrepreneurial community together to focus on common goals," said board Chairman Erroll B. Davis Jr.

"His vision and his leadership style are powerful assets to help Carnegie Mellon achieve even greater successes in the years ahead."

Salary and other financial details of the new pact were not disclosed. Federal 990 forms filed by Carnegie Mellon show that Cohon, 54, received $338,704 in pay and $35,740 in benefits during 1999-2000, the most recent year available.

In an interview after the vote, Cohon said Carnegie Mellon is continuing to pursue initiatives in a strategic plan he oversaw after arriving in 1997. He cited campus gains in several areas, among them efforts to create a more diverse student body and to enhance undergraduate education.

"I'm delighted and very excited. I'm gratified by the vote of confidence that this represents in my presidency, and I am very enthusiastic about what the future holds for Carnegie Mellon over the next five years," he said.

The largest challenge facing the university remains the size of its endowment, Cohon said.

"We're competing with universities that have endowments much bigger than ours -- in some cases as much as 10 times as great as ours," he said. "Even though we had a very successful fund-raising campaign, we barely made a dent in terms of the gap."

He pointed to progress made on several fronts.

In the area of campus diversity, Cohon cited rapid growth in the number of women majoring in computer science at Carnegie Mellon over the last several years, a surge that has brought the campus national attention. He said the share of first-year students who are African American is expected to increase to 6 percent this fall from 4.5 percent last year.

Cohon also pointed to a June 2001 study of 117 campuses by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute in which Carnegie Mellon was identified as one of several schools that showed the most significant positive changes in the undergraduate program between 1989 and 1998.

In discussing areas of future emphasis, Cohon mentioned several initiatives, including the school's biotechnology efforts and participation in the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a consortium intended to help build the region's biotechnology industry and add 5,000 new jobs.

Cohon and University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg are co-chairmen of that consortium and the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, a venture with a similar mission for the information technology sector.