Outgoing UW President Cauce reflects on the joys and challenges of 10 tumultuous years

When Ana Mari Cauce accepted the role of president of the University of Washington in 2015, she was upfront with the Board of Regents. She only planned to serve two five-year terms. Now, she's following through on that statement.

"(Ten years) really gives you enough time to get something done and to get something accomplished," Cauce told KUOW. "So this has been planned for a while."

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Cauce announced this week that she will exit her role as president at the start of summer 2025. She still has a year on the job. After that, she will go back to her faculty position as a professor of psychology.

Her announcement to step down comes after tense protests around the UW Seattle campus, particularly over the war in Gaza. Cauce said the situation was difficult to navigate. Some universities opted to call police on protest camps. Cauce said that is a difficult decision considering it's your own students who are likely to be arrested or removed. However, she argues that many protesters came from outside the university. The situation at UW came to a peaceful end after talks with the president.

"The truth is that almost no matter when I stepped down ... it probably would have been a difficult one," she said. "And that this has been a very dynamic 10-year period. I started right after Ferguson and the beginning of the Black Lives Matter (movement). We've had Covid. Coming out of Covid was also almost as difficult as going in. And we had the George Floyd moments, so it's been a very, very dynamic period."

"There's no question that this last year has been particularly difficult, and that the war in Gaza has been particularly polarizing, not just on college campuses, but across the country and across the world."

With one more year to go, Cauce said it's too early to begin reflecting on her time in the president's office. She says she focused on a handful of key issues: expanding educational access, and work around population health, climate change, and inequality. Still, she's proud of the work that UW has done during her time in leadership.

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"We have a program called 'converge' where we meet with (alumni). We have about eight different alumni associations in Asia, and meeting with them all together and seeing how many of our students are actually now deans and heads at universities across the world — that is incredible. I recently had a little bit of time to spend with one of my students who's now the provost at Arizona State University, and seeing how well she's doing. There's just so many moments."

Listen to the full conversation with University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce by clicking the audio above.