After
two decades as
Emory’s chief operating officer, Executive Vice President
John Temple plans to retire at the end of the 2002-2003
academic year.
Since
1982, Temple has helped plot Emory’s trajectory from
a small, regional university to an international research
institution, doubling its staff and adding more than thirty
buildings and several adjunct campuses. A catalyst for
much of that growth was the Woodruff family’s $105
million gift in 1979.
Emory’s
financial prosperity, Temple says, has been due to a blend
of good fortune, substantial donations, and careful stewardship.
But money alone has not carried the University to the
stature it now occupies.
“We’ve
got a great location, sitting in a residential neighborhood
with trees all around us. We’ve had the generosity
of friends, the support of the city of Atlanta, and strong
leadership on the Board of Trustees and from the University
administrative leadership. We supply a huge part of the
medical care in Atlanta and the state,” Temple said.
“What we’ve done in the past twenty years came
from people believing in what we were doing and wanting
to be a part of it.”
Temple
oversees Emory’s investments and endowment, the construction
of facilities, and an annual operating budget of more
than $1.7 billion. Highlights of his leadership include
financing the Dobbs University Center; leading the development
of the Emory Conference Center hotel; computerizing human
resources, purchasing, and accounting; adding the Briarcliff
and Clairmont campuses; and seeing dozens of new buildings
and support facilities from groundbreaking to completion–including,
just this year, the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for
Performing Arts.
During
his tenure, Temple saw the endowment grow from $250 million
to nearly $6 billion before the recent stock market slump.
The endowment now stands at about $4.5 billion.
“We’ve
gone down about a billion dollars, so of course spending
and resources are down. In this environment, everything
slows,” Temple says. “There won’t be the
same level of building going on in the next few years
as we’ve seen the last decade.”
Emory
isn’t alone in this belt-tightening. The nation’s
wealthiest and most heavily endowed universities–including
Duke, MIT, Dartmouth, and Stanford–are experiencing
the end of a fifteen-year boom that peaked in the late
1990s. The resulting budget cutbacks have slowed construction
projects, program expansion, and staff and faculty hiring.
Universities lost an average of 3.6 percent on their investments
in 2001, and losses are expected to be even higher for
2002.
Emory’s
endowment, the eighth largest in the nation, declined
14 percent in 2001 and 4 percent in 2002, causing employee
benefits cuts and delays in planned expansions of a number
of University programs.
“We
all recognize that a university is more than just facilities,”
Temple says. “It’s also about having high-quality
faculty, programs, and students. That’s our priority.”
Emory
President William M. Chace says the search for Temple’s
replacement has begun. While Temple’s successor could
come from either the academic or business world, Chace
says, the candidate should “have considerable experience
in managing large institutions comprising many people,
many resources, and much ambition.”
Temple
admits that it’s hard for him to retire at this juncture,
as Emory faces the challenge of maintaining its health
in a weakened economy.
“I’d
love to be able to stay here and see things through,”
he says. “But nobody can stay in place forever. Sooner
or later, I had to turn it over to someone else. You have
to look at what’s best for the institution.”
Not
that he’s worried.
“Universities
generally have a life of their own. Economies ebb and
flow. But the University will be here a thousand years
from now,” Temple says. “Emory is an institution
that will prosper.”–M.J.L.
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