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POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (AP) — The president who has led Marist College for almost four decades announced Saturday he will step down next year, saying it "seems like a logical time for new leadership" after an era of growth at the Hudson Valley college.
Dennis J. Murray plans to leave the presidency of the 6,400-student liberal-arts college in June 2016.
"For the past 36 years, it has been my honor and privilege to serve as president, and during that time we have been able to accomplish extraordinary things," and the college has "exciting plans for the future," he said in a statement.
Trustees haven't yet announced their plans to search for a successor for Murray, who was only the third president in the college's nearly 90-year history. His tenure has been more than five times the seven-year average for college presidents, according to a 2012 report by the American Council on Education, a national higher-education group.
When Murray arrived as president in 1979, the Hudson Valley college had about 1,800 students, compared to today's nearly 6,400. Applications have increased sevenfold as the college added dozens of new academic programs, including a noted public-opinion polling center. A tiny endowment — just $500,000 when Murray became president — has ballooned to $221 million.
The campus has more than doubled in size, to 224 acres, as the college added new facilities ranging from a $27 million student center to an 83,000-square-foot library to a new stadium. Work is under way on a $33 million science and health building, and the college is planning a roughly $120 million student housing development. Marist even has extended its presence to a branch campus in Florence, Italy.
Every year, Murray would ask himself, "Is Marist College better than the year before?" he told the Poughkeepsie Journal in 2004.
But he also steered it through such difficult experiences as the deaths of two current students and a former student in a 2012 house fire.
Murray was only the third president in the college's nearly 90-year history. Established as a Marist Brothers seminary, Marist became independent in 1969. It now offers 44 bachelor's programs and 12 different master's degrees.
Murray, 68, will stay at the college as a public policy professor.
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