John Toll, former university president and the University System of Maryland’s first-ever chancellor, died of respiratory failure Friday morning, The Washington Post reports.
After receiving degrees from Yale and Princeton, Toll, 87, came to this university in 1953 as chairman of the physics and astronomy department. He served 13 years in the post and is credited with building it into the highly ranked national program it is today, according to system Chancellor Brit Kirwan.
In 1965, he left the university to become the founding president of New York’s Stony Brook University — but he hadn’t left this state behind forever.
Toll returned to the university in 1978 to assume the presidency of a five-campus system. He aided in the transformation into an 11-campus university system ten years later, of which he became the first chancellor.
As the creator of this university’s “tradition of excellence,” Toll envisioned transforming the university into a top ten public institution and set it on a path to becoming one of the nation’s best public schools.
“His energy and his ideas, his vision, his enthusiasm were really galvanizing, and as a result of that, he really rallied supportive faculty and staff and alumni and deserves credit for elevating the aspirations in Maryland for what higher education can be,” said Kirwan, who began working with Toll in 1964. “I think he laid the foundation for all the good things that have followed since he stepped down as chancellor.”
Due to allegations of mismanagement, Toll left the position a year later, The Washington Post reports, and returned to the physics department.
The Board of Regents — the 17-member board that sets university policy — named Toll a “Chancellor Emeritus” and established the John S. Toll Professorship in Physics award to honor his commitment to this university, according to a statement by university President Wallace Loh.
“His pursuit of excellence, globalization, and innovation helped make the University of Maryland what it is today,” Loh stated in the release.
After completing a term as president of Washington College in Chestertown, Md., he again returned to College Park in 2004 to teach physics in the building that bears his name, according to Loh’s statement.
Toll is survived by his wife Deborah Taintor Toll, of Bethesda, Md.; his daughters Dacia of New Haven, Conn. and Caroline of Minneapolis; and a grandson, reports The Washington Post.
A service is being planned for early this fall, according to Loh’s statement.
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