HONOLULU — University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood will retire in September for personal, health and family reasons, the school said Monday.
The Board of Regents will discuss plans to replace Greenwood in coming months, the university said in a statement.
Greenwood, who took office in 2009, plans to take unpaid leave and return to a tenured faculty position at the university after that.
“This university has accomplished an amazing amount in a rather short and extremely challenging time,” said Greenwood said in a statement.
She told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that her retirement is not related to the athletic department’s botched attempt to hold a fundraiser concert headlined by Stevie Wonder. State lawmakers criticized Greenwood’s response when it became clear the university was scammed out of a $200,000 deposit by someone falsely claiming to represent the singer.
The late Sen. Daniel Inouye defended Greenwood amid the critical onslaught by praising her in a letter he sent to the Board of Regents in November.
He said that, under Greenwood, he had “a particularly successful” partnership with the university in attracting investments for the school in astronomy, oceans and other fields.
