GWU President Says He Will Step Down in 2007

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg will step down as president of George Washington University in summer 2007, ending a nearly 20-year tenure in which he helped transform the school from a sleepy institution to one of national stature.

Trachtenberg, an expansive man whose distinctive personal style drew fierce admirers and detractors, announced his departure yesterday in a phone call to the school's board of trustees. He will become president emeritus and a professor in the School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

"It's time," said Trachtenberg, who stood out among the country's normally staid college presidents by being a relentless joke- and storyteller. "I just hope I have the good sense to keep my mouth shut when they bring in a new president."

Trachtenberg is the longest-serving university president in the Washington area and something of a rarity in today's world of higher education, in which the average stay for a president is 6.6 years, according to a 2002 report by the American Council of Education.

During his time as the 15th president of GWU, the school grew physically, financially and in academic reputation. The endowment is nearly $1 billion, almost $800 million more than when Trachtenberg arrived in 1988; undergraduate applications have jumped from 6,000 to more than 20,000 annually (moving it from the ranks of a "safe" school to one that many students now worry about gaining admission to); and a number of the school's programs have climbed in national rankings. In 2004, there were 10,556 undergraduates.

The city's largest private employer, GWU under Trachtenberg also opened the first new hospital in the District in 25 years, created five new schools and elevated athletics.

"He made the school much more national in scope and impression, upgraded the faculty and bettered the tone of the school for everyone," said Charles Manatt, a lawyer and board of trustees chairman.

Trachtenberg, who will be 69 when he steps down, went to GWU after 11 years as president of the University of Hartford and immediately signaled a departure from his predecessor, Lloyd H. Elliott.

Elliott's quiet administration was manifested in his refusal to allow GWU to become what he called an international press center for the 1987 summit between then-President Ronald Reagan (R) and then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It would be too disruptive to the students, he said, a decision that led to criticism from the White House.

Trachtenberg, in contrast, opened the school to the world. He offered the campus as the 1993 Clinton-Gore inauguration press center, signed a deal with CNN to become the first university to have a partnership with a broadcast network and hosted speakers including current President Bush (R), former President Bill Clinton (D), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and the Dalai Lama.

And Trachtenberg traveled the world to promote GWU. "This was a 24-7 job for me," he said. "It's been my life."

Still, some faculty and students said he governed imperiously and his tenure should be looked at more critically.