Citing poor personal health and an improved financial outlook for the state, UC President Mark Yudof said Friday that he would resign at the end of August.
“[It] has become clear to me that the time has come for me to step away and return to the teaching of law on the Berkeley campus,” Yudof said in a statement.
“The prior 18 months brought a spate of taxing health issues. Though these challenges have been largely overcome, I feel it is time to make a change in my professional lifestyle.”
In 2008, when he was chancellor of the University of Texas, Yudof at first told a university headhunter he wasn’t interested in the UC job, according to U-T San Diego.
“He reconsidered after [Richard Blum, chairman of the UC Board of Regents] asked a former UC regent who had known Yudof in Texas, San Diego Padres owner John Moores, to call him,” the U-T reported at the time.
Yudof, 68, will tack an extra $230,000 annually to his pension because he spent more than five years in the office, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Yudof acknowledged that it had been a hard five years for the nation’s largest public university system: “When I arrived in 2008, the economy had begun to unravel and state coffers were tumbling deep into the red. With its budget slashed, the university was presented with one of the most severe challenges in its history.”
Praising Gov. Jerry Brown and the leaders of the state Legislature, Yudof said that the worst of the state’s fiscal woes appeared to be behind it and the university survived "with its fundamental attributes intact."
During Yudof’s tenure, tuition at UC schools including UCSD nearly doubled.
Yudof and his wife live in the East Bay town of Lafayette.
