After taking one last look from his office, President Richard Freeland walked down the steps of Churchill Hall on Monday and headed for his car, which was waiting for him in the spot reserved for the university’s top position. Nearby, a group of administrators, faculty and staff congregated to say goodbye to Northeastern’s sixth president as he brought his decade in office to a close.

In that time, Northeastern has gained the national appeal and selectivity it once lacked: application figures doubled and the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen leapt more than 200 points.

“I think of institutions as sort of a trajectory, a course of evolution, and as president, you need to think of where an institution is in its particular trajectory,” Freeland said in an interview with The News earlier this year. “What Northeastern needed from me as president, more than anything else, was what I refer to as a ‘repositioning,’ getting firmly established as a top-tier selective university.”

Prior to tackling the presidency, Freeland held several administrative positions at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and served as vice chancellor for academic affairs at The City University of New York.

Freeland said he plans to spend the next year as a visiting professor at Harvard University.

Yesterday, Joseph Aoun, former dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, took office as the seventh president of Northeastern. –>