The University of Minnesota’s next president will have a total compensation of more than $1 million a year under a new contract approved Friday by the school’s Board of Regents.

Rebecca Cunningham, who the board named the university system’s next president in February, will earn an annual salary of $975,000 a year, plus retirement benefits. She’s expected to start the job on July 1.

Cunningham’s compensation is in the 75th percentile for Big Ten university presidents, according to a salary survey from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

“It is a market-competitive agreement that speaks to Dr. Cunningham’s skill and experience,” said Board of Regents chair Janie Mayeron.

In addition to the annual salary, Cunningham will get retirement plan contributions for the duration of the contract. If she remains in the job until 2029, she’ll get a total of $675,000 in annual installments starting at around $120,000 in 2025.

Her annual raise will be the greater of either 3.5% or the salary increase provided to other professional and administrative employees at the U.

The contract also contains a clause specifically prohibiting Cunningham from taking other professional positions, such as serving on the board of a different organization.

Cunningham’s predecessor Joan Gabel came under fire during her tenure for serving on the board of Securian Financial, which does business with the University of Minnesota.

Cunningham’s overall compensation is close to her predecessor’s. Gabel had a contract that with benefits brought her total compensation to around $1 million annually.

However, more of Gabel’s compensation was in the form of retirement contributions, and her annual salary was just above $700,000 a year. That placed her at the bottom of Big Ten presidents.

Gabel left Minnesota last year for a better-paying job as chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh, which gave her a starting salary of around $950,000.

The U hired Cunningham on Feb. 26 after a months-long search and interview process.

Cunningham and two other finalists were named earlier in the month and toured UMN’s campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris, Rochester and the Twin Cities to meet with students, faculty and staff, before sitting for final interviews at a special Board of Regents meeting.

Cunningham’s current job is vice president for research and innovation at the University of Michigan, where she guides the university’s research mission across three campuses.

Before that, she served as the associate vice president for research-health sciences, where she oversaw research faculty and worked across disciplines to advance the university’s research agenda.

She has been a faculty member at the University of Michigan Schools of Public Health and Medicine since 1999.

Cunningham will be the 18th president of the University of Minnesota system and will lead five campuses with more than 68,000 students and nearly 27,000 employees.

Interim university president Jeff Ettinger will remain in his role until Cunningham takes over on July 1. The position has been open since former U president Gabel left last spring.

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Anchor Randy Shaver has announced that he will retire this summer from KARE 11, where he has covered news and sports for more than four decades.

Shaver says his last newscast will be 6 p.m. Friday, June 28. After that he plans to spend more time with his family, including his wife, Roseann, their two sons and wives and their two grandkids, Bella and Rocco.

Ahead of his retirement this summer, here are 12 things to know about the 65-year-old news personality:

He has worked at the station for 41-1/2 years

“I started as the weekend sports anchor at KARE on January 1, 1983,” Shaver recalled in his retirement announcement on Facebook on Thursday:

In 1983, the North Stars were still playing hockey in Minnesota. In baseball that year, only one Twins player made the All-Star Game (outfielder Gary Ward). And when football season kicked off in 1983, Bud Grant was still the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.

At the time, the station was known as WTCN-TV. Shaver, who began his career in May 1981 at KAAL-TV in Austin, Minn., had just turned 24 when he started the weekend shift in the Twin Cities.

His sports highlights

So much has happened in Minnesota sports in the last 43 years — and Shaver has witnessed most of it.

“I’ve had a front row seat to so many amazing sports moments in Minnesota, and some not so great, but grateful for all of it,” Shaver wrote.

Highlights?

Covering the Minnesota Twins in 1987 and 1991 as they won the World Series, he says.

He went from sports to news

By 1994, Shaver was the station’s sports director. After serving in that role for 18 years, he moved on to anchor the evening news with Julie Nelson.

“Since 2012, I’ve anchored the news, sitting next to Julie every night,” Shaver wrote. “What an honor! She’s such a pro. She taught me a lot and I appreciate her so much. I will miss her dearly.”

Nelson says she will miss him, too.

“I am so happy for him and for his lovely wife, Roseann but having a hard time imagining life at KARE without him,” Nelson wrote in a Facebook post.

He’s the longtime host of Prep Sports Extra

Shaver didn’t stop covering sports when he began anchoring the news.

He is still known for covering football on Prep Sports Extra: In 2023, he marked the 40th season of his signature high school football highlights show.

The popular program recaps games and features stories about coaches and athletes from across the state.

“Thank you to the Minnesota high school sports community especially the football coaches, players and fans!” Shaver wrote on Thursday. “40 years doing the Prep Sports Extra was the most fun I’ve ever had in this business. I will miss the adrenaline rush of Friday nights covering football in Minnesota!”

He’s a former prep athlete

Speaking of prep sports, the Iowa native was quite a standout at Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids (Class of 1977): He was inducted into the high school’s hall of fame in both football and track in 2020.

He’s had cancer — twice

More than 25 years ago, Shaver was diagnosed with cancer — Stage IV Hodgkin’s Disease — and dealt with a remission later on. He shared his experiences both times and continues to help others through his nonprofit.

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“I want to thank Minnesota’s cancer community for trusting in us to support you through the Randy Shaver Cancer Research and Community Fund,” he wrote. “Our charity isn’t going away — we are going to continue our work. My amazing wife, Roseann, will see to that.

“And thank you all for supporting me through two winning bouts of cancer! I will always be appreciative for the thousands of encouraging emails from viewers I received in 1998 and 2018. Your words helped me get through some tough times.”

The mission of the Randy Shaver Cancer Research and Community Fund is to support the cancer community in Minnesota by funding research, prevention, treatment and other programs relating to the needs of the cancer community. More info, including upcoming events, at randyshavercancerfund.org.

Craig Kilborn interned under him

After Shaver announced his retirement news Thursday morning on his Facebook page, comedian Craig Kilborn was one of the commenters.

“Congrats Randy!” Kilborn wrote. “Never forget when I interned at KARE and you were very nice to me and very supportive. Cheers!”

“Craig Kilborn I knew you when,” Shaver replied to Kilborn’s comment. “Thank you.”

Kilborn, who grew up in Hastings, has hosted “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and “The Late Late Show” on CBS. He currently hosts a podcast, “The Life Gorgeous.”

We asked Shaver about Kilborn the intern.

“Craig Kilborn was a sports intern for me when he was in college and I gave him a chance to do an on-the-set sports audition to help him get his first job,” Shaver recalls. “He knocked it out of the park! Best intern sports audition I ever saw.”

He’ll still be on the radio

Fans will still be able to listen to Shaver talk sports — and more — during his weekday appearances on the 93X Half-Assed Morning Show.

“As I’ve said before, this is the best part of my day,” Shaver said when he announced the news on the show. “I have enjoyed this more than I thought I ever would and for 20+ years I’ve been here and I don’t plan to go away.”

He’s not done working, but …

What else is on the horizon?

Shaver is not sure — yet.

“I’m wide open to whatever comes my way,” he says. “I’m not walking away from work completely.”

Especially if it involves sports — especially football — in some way. On the radio? Maybe. Coaching? Possibly. But one thing is for sure.

“If I’m going to work after 65, it’s going to be exactly what I want to do,” Shaver says. “If it’s not, I’m not going to do it.”

The best part

There’s one thing that Shaver says he is looking forward to the most:

“The biggest thing is not having to drive home from work at 10:45,” he says of his nightly commute.

Shaver has been working from 2 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. for a long time.

“Since May 1981, I’ve never worked any other shift,” he says.

KFAN-FM’s Mark Rosen, who retired from WCCO-TV in 2019, tells Shaver he’ll enjoy it.

“Randy, you won’t believe how liberating it is to have your nights free without a coat and tie,” Rosen wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Congratulations on doing so much for our community, it was a blast sharing our local airwaves for so many years.”

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Gunnar Sather wanted to celebrate with his friends last year when the Mahtomedi boys hockey team won the Class A state championship.

That’s exactly what he did. That barrier in front of him be damned.

As the Zephyrs raced over to their student section, officially state champions after a game-winner from Jonny Grove in double overtime against Warroad, Sather sprung into action. Literally. He went viral on social media after jumping the glass at Xcel Energy Center to join in the celebration on the ice.

Unfortunately for Sather, that decision ended up having lasting effects. The punishments included a two-year ban from the Xcel Energy Center, an eight-game suspension from baseball and a two-game suspension from football. Additionally, the Minnesota State High School League continued to make an example of Sather this year, barring him from attending section tournaments and state tournaments.

“It’s unfortunate that he has the label on him that he does,” Mahtomedi boys hockey coach Jeff Poeschl said this week. “He is a real character young man.”

His classmates agree, and they got creative this week at the state boys hockey tournament as a way to show their support. The Mahtomedi student section showed up for the quarterfinal matchup wearing shirts with the words “FREE GUNNAR” displayed prominently on the front. There’s also a drawing capturing the iconic moment when Sather jumped the glass.

“It’s awesome,” Mahtomedi goaltender Charlie Brandt said. “He was like the biggest fan ever. Now he can’t come to any of our games. They’re showing support for him and I think it’s great.”

It started as an idea from a group of Sather’s friends, including Ben Mitchell, who served as the unofficial spokesperson for the movement. He said they came up with the design last week and enlisted the help of an art teacher to help screenprint the shirts in advance of the state tournament.

“We thought maybe 20 or 30 people might buy the shirts and we showed up and it was completely packed,” Mitchell said. “We had no idea it was going to blow up.”

Mitchell estimated they have sold more than 300 shirts this week, adding that the plan is to donate the proceeds to charity to make sure something good comes out of this situation.

“It scared us a little bit how much it blew up because we don’t want him getting in any more trouble,” Mitchell said. “He stayed out of it and let us do our thing because he doesn’t want to give them any more reason to punish him.”

Asked for his opinion, Mitchell expressed frustration with how everything has been handled by the Minnesota State High School League.

“He’s not a bad kid,” Mitchell said. “It’s ridiculous they decided to make an example out of him and push all the punishments that they could on him. There was nothing malicious about his idea to jump the glass. They have made this way, way bigger than it needed to be.”

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — The chances of St. Paul’s Louie Varland making the Twins’ Opening Day major league roster rest largely on the health of Anthony DeSclafani’s right elbow.

That elbow, DeSclafani said just minutes after finishing a 35-pitch bullpen session on Friday at Hammond Stadium, is once again feeling good.

Varland, who is unlikely to break camp with the Twins unless there is an injury among Minnesota’s projected starting five in the rotation, started and pitched three scoreless innings in the Twins’ 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Meanwhile, about 100 miles south at the team’s complex, DeSclafani was back testing out his elbow.

The veteran DeSclafani was briefly shutdown after experiencing some soreness in his elbow following a live batting practice session earlier this spring. Friday marked his second bullpen and third time off the slope — he threw a 10-pitch touch-and-feel session — and he walked away pleased by how he felt.

“The training staff has done a good job of just helping me get back to feeling good,” he said.

The Twins will map out a plan for DeSclafani soon and assess how he’s feeling on Saturday as they plot his path forward. Saturday is particularly important considering the first time he felt soreness wasn’t during the live batting practice but the day after, he said.

“It was more of that night/the next day soreness that was kind of what put everything on hold,” DeSclafani said. “I was like ‘Alright, I need a couple days.’ I think that’s always — that’s how it’s going to be when you’re coming back from injuries or stuff like that.”

As for how much time he thinks he needs to get ready for the reason — the season begins on March 28 but he wouldn’t be needed until early April — the right-hander said he still thinks he has plenty of time to build up and get into game action.

“First and foremost, it’s going to be health over ramping up too quickly,” he said. “I’m putting my health first. … I still think I have plenty of time to ramp up to be ready for whenever they need me.”

Prospect game on tap

The Twins’ stars of tomorrow will be on display next week, with most of the organization’s top prospects set to participate in MLB’s first Spring Breakout.

The prospect showcase, which will be available for fans to stream for free on MLB’s website, will take place on March 16 with the Twins’ top young players facing off against the top prospects in the Tampa Bay Rays’ system.

Minnesota’s Walker Jenkins, Brooks Lee Emmanuel Rodriguez, Gabriel Gonzalez — acquired in the Jorge Polanco deal — and pitcher David Festa are among those on the roster announced by the Twins on Thursday. Nine of the Twins’ top-10 prospects, per MLB Pipeline, are set to play in the game.

Briefly

Second baseman Edouard Julien left Friday’s game early after being hit by a pitch. … Jose Miranda played the field on Friday in Bradenton for the first time since undergoing offseason shoulder surgery. He had served as the team’s designated hitter in his previous spring training games. Miranda, who is likely to begin the season at Triple-A, is expected to see most of his action in the field at first base.

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