Sign up for The Brief , The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. Richard Benson, the president of the University of Texas at Dallas, announced on Monday his plans to step down after eight years at the helm of the nearly 31,000 student campus. In a letter to the campus community , Benson, 73, said the University of Texas System Chancellor J.
B. Milliken has accepted his decision and the UT Board of Regents will start a search for a new president soon. Benson will stay on until a successor is named and ready to start their term, which he noted might take the entire academic year.
He will remain a member of the UT-Dallas faculty. In his letter, Benson said serving as UT-Dallas’ fifth president was the “pinnacle” of his 45-year career in academia, praising the entire university community for their efforts to improve the public university. “Thanks to your superb work, our new president will inherit a university with near-record enrollment numbers, record levels of research activity, record levels of community engagement, a record endowment, and its highest rankings and reputational scores,” Benson wrote.
Benson came to UT-Dallas from Virginia Tech University, where he served as the dean of engineering for 11 years. He started his career in higher education as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester in New York. He also taught at Penn State University before heading to Vi.