Vagelos Graduates

NJBIZ, Apr 12, 2004

Over the past two years, P. Roy Vagelos has pushed hard for a merger of the state's public universities into a single, better-organized institution. Now he has conceded that his efforts have ended in failure and resigned his posts on Rutgers University's board of governors and its board of trustees.

Vagelos says he plans to become more involved in work for Columbia University, where he earned his medical degree in 1954. The retired Merck CEO wanted to unite Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology to create a hotbed of innovation in the life sciences.

Governor McGreevey backed Vagelos' merger mission at first but then backed away last December as political and bureaucratic resistance stiffened. Vagelos says the committee he chairs, which had been looking at how to implement a merger, will complete a final report in the next few weeks and forward it to McGreevey. Vagelos says he hopes it will serve as a useful guide if the merger issue is taken up again.