Timothy J. Sullivan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timothy Jackson Sullivan was the Twenty-fifth President of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Sullivan’s life has long been intimately linked with William and Mary. He first came to the college as a freshman in 1962. He left four years later with a bachelor’s degree in government, a Phi Beta Kappa key and membership in Omicron Delta Kappa. His wife, Anne Doubet Klare, was a fellow member of the class of 1966. Like other William and Mary alumni, they were married in the chapel of the Sir Christopher Wren Building.
After receiving a law degree from Harvard University in 1969, Sullivan went on to serve in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Vietnam, where he received the Army Commendation Medal, First Oak Leaf Cluster and Bronze Star. Sullivan came back to William and Mary in 1972 as an assistant professor at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, where he specialized in teaching contract law. He rose quickly, becoming an associate law professor in 1974, then full professor and associate dean in 1977.
In 1981 and 1982, Sullivan was a visiting law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He returned to Marshall-Wythe in 1984, as the John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence, after serving for nearly three years as executive assistant for policy for then-Governor Charles S. Robb. Sullivan became dean of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law in July 1985. Sullivan was elected president of the College on April 9, 1992 by the Board of Visitors and was sworn in as president on June 1, just eight months before the school's 300th anniversary celebration.
Sullivan was given the Freedom of the Drapers’ Company in London in November 1992 and was installed as a member of the Livery in July, 2003. In April 1993 he received an LLD (hon.) from the University of Aberdeen. He received the Outstanding Virginian Award from the Virginia 4-H Foundation in 1999. Active in public service, Sullivan has been executive director of the Governor’s Commission on Virginia’s Future, counsel for the Commission on the Future of the Virginia Judicial System, a member of the Virginia Board of Education and the Governor’s Task Force on Substance Abuse and Sexual Assault on Campus. In addition, he was appointed by Governor L. Douglas Wilder as chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Intercollegiate and Interscholastic Athletics.
Sullivan is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the Ohio State Bar and a Fellow of the Virginia Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation, and serves as Chair of the Governing Board of the Virginia Council of University Presidents. Most recently, he has been rumored as a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate (Virginia).
In 2004 he announced his retirement. On July 1, 2005, he was succeeded by Gene R. Nichol, former dean of the University of North Carolina law school. On November 1, 2006, became president and CEO of the Mariners' Museum, in Newport News, Virginia.
| Preceded by Dr. Paul Robert Verkuil |
President of William & Mary 1992 – 2005 |
Succeeded by Gene R. Nichol |
