President of Caltech Announces Resignation

Thomas E. Everhart, who has headed Caltech for the last nine years, announced Wednesday that he will step down as president next year.

In a letter to faculty and students, Everhart, 64, said he was making his announcement now to provide ample time to find a successor who can continue some of the broad initiatives already underway to enhance the quality of education and research at the famed Pasadena institution.

The fifth president of Caltech, Everhart made his announcement, coincidentally, on “Ditch Day,” the Pasadena institute’s annual student rite of intellectual pranksterism and silliness.

Faculty leaders praised Everhart, who has overseen a $350-million fund-raising drive as well as the construction of several projects during his tenure, including the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Moore Laboratory of Engineering and the high-tech Fairchild Engineering Library.

Opening this fall will be Avery House, the campus’ first new dormitory in three decades, which is intended to increase interaction between undergraduates, graduate students and faculty.

Everhart also made a concerted effort to hire more female faculty and increase the enrollment of women at what had long been a male bastion. The entering freshman class this fall will be about 30% women, an all-time high, and double what it was when Everhart arrived at Caltech in 1987.

“His finest accomplishment has been the garnering of more support for research and education here,” said John Hopfield, the Roscoe Dickinson professor of chemistry and biology and past chair of the faculty.

One of the top challenges facing his successor, Hopfield said, is the “immensely changing climate for research support” from the federal government.

Caltech gets about $140 million of its $289-million annual budget from the government. All research institutions have felt a chill wind since the end of the Cold War, however, as defense cutbacks and other shifts create a more unstable funding picture.

“The old paradigm of the federal government funding basic research and some applied research in order to improve the health of the nation and our national defense has broken down,” Everhart said.

“Half of the members of Congress have been in their positions one or two terms, so there is not as much understanding of the benefits of scientific research to the economic welfare of the country. That has to be there to motivate the funding of research.”