The Florida State University Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to extend President Richard McCullough\u2019s contract by three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot to do. We have not, I have not accomplished my goals,\u201d McCullough told the board. \u201cI look forward to the next chapter, and I appreciate the support.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCullough has a doctorate in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and served as Vice Provost for Research at Harvard University before becoming FSU\u2019s 16th president in 2021.<\/p>\n
His contract was set to expire in August but now runs through Aug. 31, 2029. The most recent contract from August 2025 increased his base salary to $1.25 million a year. He also received a $500,000 bonus after his evaluation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the largest salaries among university presidents in the state. This week, the University of Florida\u2019s Board of Trustees voted to pay its next president an annual salary of $3 million.<\/p>\n
FSU has about 33,000 undergraduates and about 13,000 graduate students.<\/p>\n
State law caps the public funds that can be used to pay university presidents\u2019 salaries at $200,000, with the rest paid with non-public taxpayer sources.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we can tell you we love you and want you, a contract kind of solidifies that,\u201d said Vivian de las Cuevas-Diaz, vice chair of the board. \u201cI\u2019m very thankful that we\u2019re here today to be able to continue the road together with this board and you as president, because I think it\u2019s doing FSU a lot of good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trustees will come back in August and conduct an annual review, said Chairman Peter Collins.<\/p>\n
In January the Florida Board of Governors of the State University System changed its rules to allow universities to extend presidents\u2019 contracts up to three years instead of one year at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate your willingness to push,\u201d said Collins. \u201cYou know what excellence looks like. If you know what it looks like, you can get us there, and you\u2019re getting us there, and I can\u2019t say that about a lot of people.<\/p>\n
Under McCullough\u2019s tenure, FSU invested $160 million in a new building for its College of Business, the largest academic space in FSU\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
In April 2025, he also led the school through a mass shooting, when an FSU student killed two people and injured five others on campus.<\/p>\n
FSU is currently in the process of acquiring the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare hospital, deal worth more than $100 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida State University Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to extend President Richard McCullough\u2019s contract by three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-171283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}