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Brown plans to step down as CU president
The Associated Press
Issue date: 1/19/07 Section: News
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A state lawmaker who was briefed on Brown's plans said Thursday that Brown intends to step down in February 2008.
"He believes he has completed everything he set out to do, and that is to give the university more transparency," said the lawmaker, who asked not to be identified because the official announcement had not yet been made.
The university scheduled a news conference later Thursday at its main Boulder campus for "a major leadership announcement" but gave no details.
Brown, a former U.S. senator, took charge of the state's flagship university in August 2005, replacing Elizabeth Hoffman, who stepped down after a series of scandals shook the school.
The university had endured a sexual assault scandal in the football program, and a professor was fiercely criticized for likening some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to a Nazi bureaucrat. The school's independent fundraising arm had been accused of skirting state spending rules.
Brown decided to announce his resignation early to give the university time for an extensive search, the lawmaker said.
Brown served in the U.S. Senate from 1991 to 1997 and was elected to five terms in the U.S. House before that.
He was president of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley from 1998 to 2002.
State lawmakers praised Brown's work at the university and said they would be sorry to see him go.
"I think he has given CU some great stability and set them on a course to achieve great things," said Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden.
House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, said Brown was a statesman who rescued the university from its scandals and gave it a moral compass.
"He came in at literally a time of crisis for the university. He was truly the right person at the right time," she said.
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