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Boston University Trustees name DeWolfe chairman

The Trustees of Boston University have elected real estate executive Richard DeWolfe (MET'71) as chairman of the board. He succeeds Earle Cooley (LAW'57), who has been chairman since 1994. Cooley was elected chairman emeritus.

Richard DeWolfe. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

"Dick DeWolfe will be a great leader for the board as it oversees the next stage of Boston University's development," says Cooley.

"I recommended him to my colleagues as my successor because he has the intelligence, vision, imagination, and energy to help create the brilliant future that I foresee for the University."

DeWolfe is chairman and chief executive officer of the DeWolfe Companies, Inc., the largest residential real estate firm in New England and the ninth largest in the United States. He was named a trustee in October 1995. Subsequently he served as vice chairman of the board, as cochairman of the Committee on Development, and as a member of the trustees' Executive Committee.

But DeWolfe is perhaps best known to BU students for the structure that bears his name: the DeWolfe Boathouse, home of the men's and women's Terrier crew teams. In 1996 he initiated the Pulling Together capital campaign to fund the boathouse construction with a $1 million gift in memory of his paternal grandparents, Alice and Burpee L. DeWolfe. The handsome state-of-the art building was dedicated in the fall of 1999, replacing a dilapidated century-old shed and dramatically increasing storage and training space for the teams.

Born in 1944, DeWolfe is a 1962 graduate of Milton High School in Milton, Mass. While posted overseas in the United States Air Force, he enrolled in a college extension program, and when he transferred to Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod he continued through BU's program at the base. After leaving the military, he finished his studies at Metropolitan College while working at the Bank of Boston and selling real estate through his mother's firm in Milton, Mass. In 1974 he bought out the firm, which now has nearly 3,000 sales associates and employees and an annual sales volume in excess of $6 billion.

In addition to his leadership in real estate, DeWolfe is chairman of Reliance Relocation Services/RELO, president of the Boston Minuteman Council of the Boy Scouts of America, and a director of the Boston Foundation, the National Conference for Community and Justice, and the Boston Police Foundation. He is a former president of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, and in 1978 was named both Greater Boston Realtor of the Year and Massachusetts Realtor of the Year. He is also the recipient of a MET alumni award for distinguished service to the profession.

As the first MET alumnus to serve on the Board of Trustees, DeWolfe has been an effective advocate for the college, according to MET Dean John Ebersole. "I find him to be a very approachable person who takes his past association with the University and with Metropolitan College very seriously," he says. "He feels that we met a need in his life, and he's quite grateful for that. Certainly the effort he has expended on behalf of the University speaks for itself."

DeWolfe and his wife, Marcia, have six children. They live in Milton and Falmouth, Mass.

"I am deeply honored that my fellow trustees have chosen me as their chairman," says DeWolfe. "The excellence of our faculty, the strength of our research programs, and our commitment to the education of future generations of leaders in the professions, in the arts, in business, and in public service have placed Boston University at the forefront of American higher education."

DeWolfe adds that he is honored to follow Cooley in the position of chairman.

"He has set the highest standards for Boston University," DeWolfe says, "and has led us to new levels of success in fundraising, in building the campus, and in maintaining an atmosphere in which outstanding scholarship and teaching can take place."

23 April 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations