Robert Caret, a 29-year veteran at Towson University as teacher of chemistry, dean, provost and president, will return to Maryland next summer to become chancellor of Maryland's public university system, which includes a dozen public universities and more than 160,000 students. Caret left Towson in 2011 to become president of the University of Massachusetts. He will replace Brit Kirwan, who announced last May that he would retire as chancellor. The system presented Caret as incoming chancellor at a press event Friday, and afterwards he sat down with us for a conversation.
In this interview, we discuss the court-ordered mediation going on between the University System of Maryland and advocates for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In October 2013, we spoke about the lawsuit that forced the mediation with Scott Jaschik, an editor and one of the founders of Inside Higher Ed, an online news site on higher education.
