Michael Stoff announced Tuesday afternoon he is resigning as director of the Plan II honors program.
 
Stoff served as Plan II director for 11 years and said in a special announcement to the program that he will be stepping down in August to return to the history department. Alexandra Wettlaufer, current associate professor of Plan II, will become the new director.
 
Stoff said the transition will be seamless, and he expects the new direction Wettlaufer takes to be equally beneficial to the program.
 
“It has been both a privilege and a genuine pleasure to lead one of the most renowned honors programs in the nation,” Stoff said. “During the last 11 years, we have expanded our reach globally with three new Plan II study-abroad programs and deepened our grasp locally with experiential learning courses that put students in the real world.”
 
In addition, Stoff said Plan II has increased the diversity of its faculty, created 10 new first-time Plan II professorships in the sciences, mathematics, social sciences and humanities, and established Plan II paid internships at most of the institutions at the University.
 
“Thank you all for the support you’ve offered over the years, for the opportunity to get to know so many of you, and for the chance to mentor more than a few of you,” Stoff said. “My service to Plan II has been a crown of my career at the University of Texas at Austin.”
 
Stoff received his bachelor’s from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He is an associate professor of history, University distinguished teaching associate professor and an Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer. He recently received the UT System-wide Regents Outstanding Teaching Award.
 
He is also the author of “Oil, War and American Security” and co-editor of “The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age.”