Levin Leaving; Describes Next Jobs Challenge

As praise showered on Rick Levin for his soon-to-end tenure as Yale’s president, he gave himself a tough grade in one area: creating new tech-related jobs in New Haven.

“Creating jobs through spin-off science — we’re still at the B minus level. We’ve got a ways to go,” Levin told the Independent in a Thursday afternoon interview in his Woodbridge Hall office (excerpted in the video at left). ​“That’s been harder than I thought.”

Levin — the CEO of New Haven’s largest employer since 1993 and the Ivy League’s longest-serving president — spoke on the day that he issued a major announcement: He will step down as Yale’s president at the end of the academic year.

The announcement brought immediate praise both in New Haven and nationally for Levin’s success in revolutionizing Yale’s relationship with New Haven, attaining labor peace to the city’s largest workforce, rebuilding his campus, and transforming Yale into a global university.

The praise included Levin’s work in changing Yale’s approach to local job creation. Under his direction Yale has moved aggressively to encourage Yale researchers to launch local companies based on their research. Dozens of companies have sprung up as a result. That has helped fill new Haven’s 300 George Street complex and parts of Science Park and led to the construction of a new 10-story tech-oriented office building as part of the ​“Downtown Crossing” project.

But as Levin noted, all too often companies hatched in New Haven move elsewhere when they succeed — even when the founder lives here and wants to hire employees here. That’s because investors often want growing companies to locate nearer to sizable, qualified workforces. ​“We have lots of good ideas. We have had successful start-up companies. But it’s hard to keep them in New Haven beyond the incubation phase,” he said.

That happened within the past year when Science Park-based Hadapt Inc. landed $9.5 million in venture capital, for instance. The deal included a requirement to move near Stanford or MIT, where engineers are hatched by the busload. Yale researcher Daniel Abadi had hoped to keep the company in town. (Read about that here.)

In the interview Thursday, Levin noted the role that the city and state and local schools play in training workers for many of the jobs at emerging companies. But when it comes to engineers and other advanced positions, Yale needs to play a big role, he said. In the past few years Yale has moved to grow its computer science and engineering programs. It just opened a new Engineering Center for Innovation and Design.

“We had 200 students there for the opening event. There’s a growing student interest. We have a great engineering dean,” Levin said. ​“As our enrollments grow in those technical fields and as we orient students toward more practical activity, we’ll get more talent there.”

Meanwhile, he noted, developer Carter Winstanley (the man behind 300 George, several Science Park rehabs, and Downtown Crossing) has helped boost the biomedical center with state and city help. So one Yale-hatched company, Alexion, is in fact moving back to town from Cheshire to occupy much of Winstanley’s new 100 College St. tower at Downtown Crossing.

Levin gave higher grades to Yale’s other New Haven initiatives.

“If I had to make a scorecard, in terms of helping to stabilize New Haven as a place with safe and attractive neighborhoods where people live, I think we’ve made a lot of progress” over the past 20 years, Levin said. ​“In terms of downtown development, Broadway development, I think it’s an A plus. I think it’s a huge recovery.

“In terms of [helping public] schooling, that didn’t go anywhere for a long time. The new school change program is really promising. It’s at least a B plus or an A minus.”

A New World, A New City

Levin announced his retirement Thursday morning in a letter to the Yale community.

That letter was emailed and went out instantaneously over the web for everyone to read — something that didn’t happen when Levin took over Yale in 1993. (Read the letter here.)

The world has changed a lot since then. And so has Yale, along with New Haven.

Under Levin’s stewardship, Yale took a leading role — first in China, most recently in a more controversial venture in Singapore — in becoming a ​“global” university. It expanded joint programs abroad. It extended financial aid to more foreign students. It created a ​“world fellows” program for mid-career emerging leaders from abroad. The broader idea: In the new shrunken world, leading universities like Yale should cultivate not just a national meritocracy, but a global one. The work made Levin a media rock star in China, though the point never got out broadly in the American media.

For New Haven, Levin will be remembered as the president who turned around the university’s troubled relationship with its unionized workforce, the city’s largest. Strikes used to be routine on campus; no more. Read about that here and here.

Labor labors for decades used to speak of Yale presidents as hard-hearted foes. Here’s what Laurie Kennington, president of UNITE HERE Local 34, which represents the university’s clerical and technical workers, told the Independent Thursday about Levin’s tenure:

“We think he’s done a really great job. He’s made it a priority to remove labor relations. He put decision-makers at the table. He emphasized problem-solving. That has indeed transformed things in the last 10 years.”

Kennington did add that the union hopes Levin’s successor ​“will place equal emphasis on the priorities he has chosen,” including an emerging ​“jobs pipeline.” (Read about that here.)

Levin will also be remembered for overseeing a dramatic improvement in Yale’s relationship with New Haven. The Yale Corporation hired Levin in part with the mission of repairing that relationship, after the murder of Yale student Christian Prince on Hillhouse Avenue revealed how the town-gown divide was costing both human life and the university’s ability to recruit top students and professors. Levin took office the same year John DeStefano won his first term as New Haven’s mayor; they eventually forged a productive and trusting personal working relationship as they oversaw the city’s most important two institutions over two decades. (Click here to read an interview with Levin about his approach to helping New Haven weather the recession as it gathered force in 2008. Click here to read about Levin and DeStefano unveiling the New Haven Promise college scholarship program, which Yale and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven agreed to support.)

DeStefano Thursday called Levin ​“a great leader at the right time,” one with a ​“great temperament.”

“The takeaway here is the university is fundamentally a stronger place. That’s not only good for the university. That’s good for New Haven,” DeStefano said.

“He redefined a host of relationships. He changed the culture of the institution. When somebody puts up a building, you can see a bbuilding and point to it. When you change a culture, I would argue it’s more profound and meaningful, and will benefit the university and the community for a long, long time. More than the building.”

In Levin’s tenure, Yale also undertook a major campaign to renovate its neglected architectural gems and greatly expand the campus, including to a new satellite in West Haven. Levin oversaw the renovation of all 12 undergraduate residential colleges and launched construction of two new ones, along with a new campus for the School of Management.

During his tenure, Levin sought to help the Yale community cope with two local murders of students, Suzanne Jovin and Annie Le. Click on the play arrow to watch his call for compassion the night Annie Le’s remains were found. Click here to read about how Yale and New Haven police learned to work together better on the Le murder case than they had with Jovin.

Levin wrote in his letter that he plans to take a ​“sabbatical year” to finish a book on higher education. He previously was under consideration for a top job in the Obama administration; the letter doesn’t mention anything about possible interest in a second-term Obama administration post. In the interview Thursday, he said he might also write a book about lessons from the economic downturn; or he may combine both topics into one book.

“It is a source of great satisfaction to leave Yale in much stronger condition – academically, physically, and financially – than it was when I began in 1993,” Levin wrote. ​“Our faculty is stronger than ever, and our deans and directors all have clear and ambitious agendas that will keep the University moving forward. Our partnership with the city of New Haven has led to great improvement in the condition of our downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. We have transformed relations with our labor unions. And we have become a truly global university – providing international experiences to the great majority of our students, supporting hundreds of faculty collaborations throughout the world, and, influencing the development of law, the effectiveness of health care delivery, and the course of global higher education.”