University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, chair of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, announced today that Jeffrey H. Orleans will retire as the Council’s executive director on June 30, 2009, and that a national search for his successor will begin in fall 2008.

He has served the Ivy Group as an executive director for 24 years, one of the longest terms of any college commissioner. As executive director, Orleans serves both as chief executive officer of the Ivy League athletics conference and in support of non-athletics Council initiatives.

“I have been extremely fortunate over the last two decades to have the chance to help the Ivy League’s extraordinary student-athletes succeed in all respects. Their character and achievements epitomize college athletics at its best, and I am very, very proud to work on their behalf and to share their passion for Ivy League athletics,” Orleans said.

In making the announcement, President Gutmann noted Orleans’ leadership. “Jeff has guided the Ivy League with unfailing attention to our core principles: maintaining high admission and academic standards for athletes; combining broad-based participation, an emphasis on league competition, and the opportunity for athletics excellence; and assuring that athletics competition contributes to student-athletes’ overall educational and personal experiences and growth,” she said.

Orleans became the Council’s first full-time executive director in September 1984. He created the Ivy office structure for compliance, athletics administration, championships, public information and NCAA activities. He leads the Ivy League’s extensive committee governance structure, and directs the Council’s periodic reviews of its approaches to athletics recruiting, admissions and to practice and competition limits. Throughout his tenure, the Ivy League has consistently provided the country’s widest athletics opportunities for both men and women, finishing among the top conferences in the National Association of College Athletic Directors competitive rankings and producing the country’s best records in the NCAA’s annual academic performance rankings.

“I have a truly wonderful staff in the Ivy League office, and with our institutional colleagues we will reach new goals in the next 16 months. I then will look forward both to remaining active in new ways in athletics and in higher education, and to approaching new challenges, and I thank the Council for the generous sabbatical support it will provide me as I identify those new paths,” Orleans said.

The search for Orleans’ successor will be overseen by Presidents Gutmann, Drew Gilpin Faust of Harvard and James Wright of Dartmouth, assisted by an advisory committee that includes Brown Dean of Admissions James Miller, Columbia Director of Athletics Dianne Murphy and Princeton Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson. The search will be conducted by Barbara Stevens of the firm Isaacson, Miller.

Orleans has served on the NCAA’s Division I Management Council and Restructuring and Gender Equity Task Forces, as an officer of both the Collegiate and University Commissioners’ Associations, on the Executive Board of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and as a presenter at its annual conferences, and on numerous other committees of all these groups. His non-athletics assignments for the Ivy Council have included convening the process to formulate its original policies with regard to international fair labor standards in 1998-2000, and supporting its current efforts regarding environmental sustainability.

Orleans was named a NACUA “Fellow” in 1990 for “bringing distinction to higher education and to the practice of law on behalf of college and university clients”; he was co-editor of NACUA’s Journal of College and University Law in 1980-81 and in 1989 co-edited its compendium, Legal Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics. In 2000-01 and 2001-02 Orleans created and co-taught Princeton University freshman seminars about ethical values in athletics; he is a frequent writer and speaker about athletics and other higher education topics.

A 1967 cum laude graduate of Yale and a 1971 graduate of Yale Law School, Orleans was a Coro Foundation Fellow in Public Affairs in San Francisco in 1967-68. He was a federal civil rights attorney from 1971 to 1975, playing a significant role in implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and a Special Assistant to University of North Carolina President William Friday from 1975 to 1984.

See an extensive interview with Orleans in the January 2008 inaugural NCAA Champion magazine at http://www.ncaachampionmagazine.org/ .