Exit interview: Ana Mari Cauce talks athletics and reflects on a decade as UW president

As she completes her tenure, Cauce shares thoughts on joining the Big Ten, House v. NCAA and more.

SEATTLE — On the third floor of Gerberding Hall, Ana Mari Cauce grabs a pair of scissors to cut bubble wrap. Gradually, she’s packing cardboard boxes with items that filled the office she occupied for nearly 10 years, since her appointment in 2015 as the University of Washington’s 33rd president.

Outside, students gather in Red Square for graduation photos. Cauce, 69, is the featured speaker at Saturday’s commencement ceremony, the 150th in UW history. She announced a year ago that she intended to step down as president after completing the second of two five-year contract terms.

She was in office for historic, landmark changes across college athletics, and particularly in football, including the NCAA lifting restrictions on name-image-likeness compensation — and, most notably, last week’s approval of the House v. NCAA settlement. In August 2023, Cauce made the landscape-altering decision to steer Washington out of the Pac-12 and into the Big Ten. She’s hired three athletic directors — two of them in the last two years — and has watched those ADs hire three different football coaches (and fire one). She twice watched the Huskies qualify for the College Football Playoff. There also was a global pandemic along the way.

I sat down with Cauce on Wednesday afternoon to reflect on her time at Washington through an athletics lens, and to get her thoughts on a number of issues facing college sports going forward. Her successor, current Illinois chancellor Robert J. Jones, begins his tenure Aug. 1.

Questions and responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.