COLUMBIA, S.C. — Clemson President Jim Barker is going back to being an architecture professor after 14 years leading the school.
Barker announced in a video message to students Tuesday that he will stay on as president until trustees pick his replacement, then go back to teaching.
Barker, 65, had emergency heart surgery in January to bypass five blockages, but said he is in good health and felt like it was the right time to hand off leadership of the university to someone else.
“I see this as a change in major for me, going from president to professor,” said Barker, who received his undergraduate degree in architecture from Clemson in 1970.
Barker became president in 1999 and worked to improve Clemson’s academics. The school says half of its 2009 freshman class graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school.
But some questioned some of Barker’s methods to improve Clemson’s standing in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Barker once rated Clemson above every other school in the nation.
Barker gave his own university a “strong” rating in the peer review survey portion of the rankings but gave no other university that high a mark. He also ranked half the undergraduate universities in the magazine’s survey as “marginal.”
