President of Columbia University to Retire Next Year : Education: Michael Sovern, the school’s most successful fund-raiser, says he will step down to spend more time with his wife, who has cancer.

Michael I. Sovern announced Saturday that he will retire after 13 years as president of Columbia University to spend more time with his wife, who is battling cancer.

“I have no choice but to choose--Joan or the presidency, and no one can be in any doubt about the outcome,” Sovern, who became Columbia’s chief executive after serving as dean of its law school, said in an open letter to the university community. “I have, therefore, asked the trustees to begin to seek my successor.”

Sovern, 61, will step down as Columbia’s 17th president on June 30, 1993. He will return to the law school as a professor.

“Were Mike Sovern leaving the helm for any reason other than Joan’s illness, the trustees would use all our persuasive powers to urge him to stay,” said G. G. Michelson, chairman of the university’s board of trustees. “We have no choice but to respect his wishes.”

Sovern’s resignation marked the second announced departure of the head of an Ivy League university in less than two weeks. Benno C. Schmidt Jr. told Yale’s trustees on May 25 that he is resigning to help create a system of high-tech private schools across the nation.

The recession has not been an easy time for university presidents, and heads of Columbia and Yale, like other college chieftains, have not been spared the pressure of rising tuitions and growing expenses.

Sovern noted the dual pressures of his wife’s illness and his responsibilities to higher education in his resignation statement.

“A university presidency, particularly in a period of change, demands even more time, even as the years of operations and chemotherapy make it harder for Joan to join me in my work,” he said.

Sovern added that his wife “continues to hold the cancer at bay.”

Sovern became president of Columbia on July 1, 1980. The university, founded in 1754 with eight students in the vestry of Trinity Church, now has 19,300 students in 16 schools and divisions. Its budget--approved Saturday by the trustees--tops $1 billion for the first time. Sovern took the helm of Columbia at a time when the university was facing financial and other difficulties.

Under his leadership, Columbia’s endowment grew from $525 million to more than $1.7 billion. He was the most successful fund-raiser in the university’s history, shepherding a five-year fund drive that brought in $602 million, $200 million more than its original goal.

Facing new pressures, Columbia began a new five-year, $1.15-billion fund-raising campaign a year and a half ago. It has already passed the halfway mark, and in his resignation letter Sovern said he would be “pleased” if asked by his successor to take it over the top.

“I take great pride in what we have accomplished since I assumed the presidency,” Sovern said. “The year 1980 marked the end of a decade in which Columbia faculty had lost 20% of the real dollar value of their salaries. We have restored all that and more as we created 92 new professorships for a faculty that ranks with the best in the world.”

Sovern, who was raised by his widowed mother, attended Columbia on a scholarship. He graduated first in his class from Columbia Law School, serving later as the law school’s dean for nine years and as the university’s provost before assuming its presidency.

“I first came to Columbia 43 years ago,” Sovern said Saturday. “Except for two years away, I have been here ever since. . . . No one could ask for a better way to spend his days nor for better people to spend them with.”