President C.D. Mote, Jr. will retire on August 31st, 2010, after serving a 12 year term.
Mote graduated from the University of California, Berkley with a B.S., M.S., and PhD in mechanical engineering. There, he served 31 years on the UC-Berkley faculty, eventually becoming Vice Chancellor of the university.
Mote began his tenure at the University of Maryland in September 1998, and served as a Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering. His campaigns have elevated the University’s status both nationally and internationally.
In particular, he has increased Maryland’s ranking among public research institutes from #30 to #18. Mote has also boosted research funding from $205.5 million in 1998 to $518 million in 2008. However, his accomplishments extend beyond rankings and endowment.
Mote has worked to foster an element of community and values among the University of Maryland population. He created Maryland Day, a campus-wide open house which attracts over 75,000 people annually. Mote has also developed a plan for the East Campus initiative which, when completed, will create a 38-acre community surrounding the Maryland campus and is expected to deliver over $1 billion in revenue to the State of Maryland and the City of College Park over the next 35 years.
He has also attracted a record number of applications to the University – 28,500, which is 12,500 more than when he assumed the office – and attracted the most highly qualified students: the fall 2009 incoming class profile boasts an average 3.93 GPA and a 1295 (out of 1600) SAT score. He oversaw the creation of Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, the Comcast Center, Knight Hall and many others. Furthermore, Mote managed to build these additions even while Maryland was named “America’s Greenest Campus” in 2009 by Climate Culture.
However, his most important contribution has been to establish an “expectation of greatness” across the students and faculty. That expectation is nowhere more evident than in the Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Since Mote’s term began, Smith has risen to the 16th best undergraduate business program in the country, boasting six programs in the top 20 and two in the top 10. Furthermore, Mote has been a strong proponent of entrepreneurship among faculty and students.
He has supported the efforts of the Dingman Entrepreneurship Center, a multitude of living-learning programs, and 11 entrepreneurship courses. Mote also, of course, oversaw the renovation of Van Munching Hall, creating the business school’s permanent home.
Mote has also offered an open invitation to take any student to lunch.
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