California president to retire

University of California President Richard Atkinson, who championed diversity in the post-affirmative-action era and whose threat to drop the SAT ignited a national debate over the value of standardized testing in college admissions, said last week that he will make good on a long-delayed plan to retire.\nHe will leave the University of California's top job on Oct. 1, 2003, giving regents nearly a year to find a successor and capping a nearly 30-year career with the university.\nAtkinson, 73, is the most visible architect of the admission strategies the university has put into place since the system's regents voted in 1995 to ban affirmative action. Those new approaches, including admitting students in the top 4 percent of their high school class and de-emphasizing standardized test scores, are credited with increasing black and Latino enrollment after a plunge when affirmative action ended.\nHe said he did what he thought was right and is confident the changes "will permit access for more underrepresented students to the university."\nAtkinson will have served eight years as president by the time he steps down, and points out only four of the system's 17 previous presidents served longer. For 27 years he has held high-pressure positions, including director of the National Science Foundation and chancellor of UC San Diego.\n"It's a long time in jobs of that sort," he said. "I think I am due to step down, and this is the perfect time to do it. I took on this job rather late in life, and I've certainly enjoyed it. I think I've been energetic and productive."\nA cognitive psychologist who has studied memory and learning, Atkinson said he plans to retire to San Diego where he will return to his research and stay active in higher education and science policy. He also said he is looking forward to having more time with his wife and grandchildren and sleeping for eight hours a night.\nAt an address in early 2001 at a meeting of the American Council on Education, he said he planned to scrap the SAT. The move made him nearly a household name. The shy, white-haired testing expert said he favored tests that are tied to the high school curriculum rather than exams that test "vague notions of aptitude" or innate intelligence.\n"He certainly has led a national re-examination of college entrance exams," said Sheldon Steinbach, vice president of the American Council on Education. "That's no small feat."\nRegent Ward Connerly, the man behind California's affirmative action ban, said although he sometimes disagreed with Atkinson, he admired him for not ducking the tough issues.\n"He guided us through political storms without the university becoming unraveled," Connerly said.\nAtkinson "set the tone for how critical scholarship is for the university's very nature," said Gayle Binion, chairwoman of the systemwide Academic Senate. "In this role he has always been steadfast."\nBeing president of the University of California "is still one of the premiere academic jobs in the world," said Steinbach from the American Council on Education. "This is as attractive as it gets"