Less than two years into his tenure, University of Florida President Ben Sasse announced on Thursday that he will step down on July 31 due to his wife’s health concerns.
“My wife Melissa’s recent epilepsy diagnosis and a new batch of memory issues have been hard, but we’re facing it together,” Sasse said in a prepared statement. “Our two wonderful daughters are in college, but our youngest is just turning 13. Gator Nation needs a president who can keep charging hard, Melissa deserves a husband who can pull his weight, and my kids need a dad who can be home many more nights.”
Sasse, who left a U.S. Senate seat representing Nebraska to become the university’s president, will transition to a teaching role. The university’s Board of Trustees will appoint an interim president and initiate a search for a new leader.
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Mori Hosseini, chairman of the Board of Trustees, praised Sasse’s contributions in a statement, saying, “Under his leadership, UF has continued to advance on the national and international stage, benefiting our students, faculty, alumni, community, and state.”
Sasse was confirmed as president by the state university system’s Board of Governors in November 2022, despite opposition from some students and faculty members. His five-year contract included a $1 million base salary, with annual performance bonuses of up to 15 percent. By stepping down early, he will forego a $1 million payout that would have been provided if he had completed the full term.
Sasse holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Yale University. He has also served as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and spent five years as president of Midland University, a small private school in Nebraska. A Republican, he was first elected to the Senate in 2014.
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Upon his confirmation as UF president, Sasse aimed to foster a sense of community among the school’s approximately 60,000 students and engage with various campus stakeholders. He also suggested that some of the controversies surrounding his candidacy were overblown. “There is always going to be, in a time as disrupted as ours, a sort of sensationalist tendency to take whatever an angriest moment is and pretend that it’s a representative moment. Those are not the representative moments,” Sasse said at the time.
Sasse was hired under a new state law that allows presidential searches to be conducted in private, with the names of finalists made public only at the end of the search. His selection as the lone candidate left the names of 11 other finalists undisclosed, drawing objections from many on campus.
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