Jacksonville University President Tim Cost speaks at commencement in May 2025. He has announced that he will retire as president. | Jacksonville University
Published on October 21, 2025 at 2:22 pm
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Jacksonville University President Tim Cost is retiring after 14 years of leading the private school in Arlington.
The retirement comes at a time of recent growth at the private university — law school, marine science and nursing programs among them — and six months after the decision to close music and arts programs and lay off 40 staff members.
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But Cost will not leave his alma mater just yet. He will become chancellor of the 91-year-old university in June or July, a transition agreed to with the JU board of trustees in 2022 so Cost can focus on partnerships, fundraising, alumni, community and government relations, he said.
Cost said he is excited to continue to serve his alma mater and looks forward to the new leadership that will replace him as president. This transition has been “locked down almost to the day” for three years with JU’s board, he said.
“We articulated back in 2021 and 2022 what that would look like and the timing and it would focus on the things that might free up a new president, an interim president coming in, so they can concentrate on the business of the school and everything with operations, capital and resource allocation, and income and balance sheets,” Cost said. “I would be available if they would like to get involved in the things that an alumnus president can do — community relations, fundraising, government — things that have to do with being out in the community and representing the university, whether it is to elected officials or to partners.”
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In a news release about Cost’s retirement, JU board Chair John Miller called Cost’s leadership “exemplary” over the past 14 years.
“Under his guidance, we’ve enjoyed growth in undergraduate and graduate enrollment, developed countless strategic partnerships in and outside of our community, and elevated our profile both in the region and beyond,” Miller said. “The board is grateful for his extraordinary commitment as president and his dedication to students, and we are confident he will help further advance our mission and expand our impact as chancellor.”
Tim Cost as president
Cost was a 1981 magna cum laude graduate from Jacksonville University. He was named the school’s president in 2012, the first alumnus to serve in that position in the university’s history. Since then, school officials point to its high U.S. News & World Report ranking and inclusion in the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 Forbes Top 500 U.S. university listing.
Closer to home, Cost directed the two largest fundraising campaigns in school history and led a “Renew Arlington” effort of community investment and economic development. JU also expanded from three colleges, five schools and two institutes to today’s five colleges, nine schools and three institutes, and established important partnerships with companies, health care providers and community organizations.
Cost’s tenure has seen other major accomplishments, like the law school opening its permanent Downtown campus a year ago, expansion of the marine sciences and nursing programs, and launching of the Keigwin School of Nursing, Brooks Rehabilitation College of Healthcare Sciences, Linda Berry Stein College of Arts and Sciences, the Frisch Welcome Center and the Rock Lacrosse Center.
In 2023, JU officially commissioned a 20-foot-tall glass and steel obelisk built in the center of a traffic roundabout at its University Boulevard North entrance, designed and installed by artist Shan Shan Sheng. And just a week ago, the university named its Public Policy Institute after noted local architect Preston Haskell, following a $12 million financial gift to the university.
Arts and music programs
In April, Cost and the university also cut 22 art, music and theater programs from its curriculum, part of a reorganization that saved $10 million, but also affected about 100 students and resulted in 40 faculty members laid off. Many students protested the shutdown.
The cuts, an effort to save $10 million, were part of a drive to meet market needs and create long-term financial sustainability at the school, Cost said. The undergraduate majors and minors in highest demand remain. But what JU calls “consistently undersubscribed and specialized fields of study” were sunsetted as current students completed them. The programs will not be offered as majors to incoming students next fall.
Speaking with Jacksonville Today in April, Cost said the the university continues to offer 37 of what he called the “most highly subscribed-to undergraduate degrees,” plus 15 graduate degrees most highly valued by the students and community.
As he announced his retirement on Tuesday to Jacksonville Today, Cost said he has been gratified that students, staff and community “have come together to build a better university.”
“It’s been a very positive experience all around, and I think we are a better university than we were a decade ago, and I think we will be getting better,” he said.
Regarding the arts and music programs, Cost said: “I labored over that one to make sure we got it right and treated everyone well, and we are pleased that most of the students who were impacted have either graduated, or on their way to being graduated.
“The faculty has been first class to deal with when we decided to dial down some of the things we taught here. Overall, those are hard business decisions you make, and we took them and now we move on. And I have watched dozens of universities do similar things over time. It is the nature of education in 2025.”
Current enrollment now stands at 4,961 students, which is up a bit from last year, Cost said.
“What you see a lot of growth in is things that people do not always think of us for like marine science, aviation, public policy — the law school just doubled in size, and there’s the STEAM Institute,” he said.
Cost said the school has been looking, for over a year, at an “outstanding pool of candidates” to replace him. The selection to be announced soon is someone already there who knows the university well, he said.
“It will be one of our own, so they won’t need too much from me other than I will make myself available. It will be someone with a lot of history of operations and they have either been at other universities or they have been here a long time. There is a wide range of skills for this board to choose from.”
Cost will assume the position of university chancellor next summer, only the second person to have that title. Frances Bartlett Kinne was university president from 1979 to 1989, then served as chancellor through 1994, after starting as a professor there in 1958. She died in 2020 at age 102.
“I consider Fran Kinne the touchstone of all leadership in the history of this university, and maybe all of higher education in the region. She became president when I was an undergrad here,” Cost said. “She and I became very, very close friends when I accepted this role in 2012, and anything Fran Kinne did that I can track in behind her that is good for the university, I am glad to do it.”
