OU President David Boren walks on the field after the Sooners' win against Auburn in the Sugar Bowl in January at the Superdome in New Orleans. Boren announced Wednesday that he will retire as president at the end of the current academic year.

NORMAN, Okla. — University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of the current academic year.

Amid rumors he would be stepping down that began Tuesday night, Boren, 76, confirmed he will leave his post June 30, 2018, pending the selection of a permanent successor. The process to determine who that will be will begin in the meantime.

Boren was appointed OU’s 13th president in 1994, part of his 50 years in public service during which he was also a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and governor of Oklahoma.

While in the Senate, he gained notoriety after becoming one of only two Democratic senators to vote in favor of President Reagan’s controversial nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. He later incurred criticism after expressing regret in a New York Times op-ed piece over his vote to confirm Clarence Thomas to the high court.

He is the second-longest serving president in OU history, behind George Lynn Cross’ 24 years between 1943-68.

His accomplishments at OU were recognized as recently as last January, when the OU board of regents celebrated his years of public service. Boren has overseen the implementation of 35 new academic programs, including the Honors College and the Institute for American Constitutional Heritage.

For the past two years, OU has had the largest and most academically successful freshmen classes in university history. It has also had the highest freshmen-to-sophomore retention rates in university history, and the amount of of private scholarship money available to students has quadrupled since Boren’s tenure began.

Also under Boren, OU became the only public university in the nation to rank first in amount of National Merit Scholars among public and private institutions. It also became the only university in the nation to have students win the Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell, Goldwater, Fulbright and Truman scholarships all in the same year.

Details for this story were reported by the Norman, Oklahoma Transcript.