KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — Western Michigan University President John Dunn has given his one-year’s notice, informing trustees and the campus community that he plans to retire at the end of the next academic year.
He’s scheduled to step down June 30, 2017.
Dunn is credited with adding a medical school and partnering with Cooley Law School in Lansing. He has overseen considerable improvements to campus, replacing what was needed to be replaced, salvaging what could be salvaged and leaving it a more useful and beautiful space than it was when he took the job ten years ago.
He has remained popular with the community and the students, if not always with the faculty. He will stay around for a year after next June as president emeritus, helping with the transition to the new president and taking assignments from the Board of Trustees, and his replacement.
And he may just be going out with the best football team the school has seen in decades.
His early announcement is intended to give trustees plenty of time to do a national search for his successor.