Ruth Mandel, the director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics for 25 years, will resign Aug. 31, Rutgers–New Brunswick Chancellor Christopher Molloy announced Tuesday.

Mandel will take a one-year research leave before returning to her role as board of governors professor of politics and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics.

“I approach this transition with wonderfully mixed feelings,” Mandel said in a statement. “I am proud of Eagleton’s long-standing, nationally respected centers and programs as well as the groundbreaking new ones that have been initiated and nurtured on my watch, the hundreds of students who have passed through our doors and the impressive and collegial faculty and staff who have been attracted to the institute and, in many cases, continued to work here almost as long as me.”

Mandel joined Eagleton in 1971 as a founder of its Center for American Women and Politics, which she built into a national center of research, education and public service. After her appointment as Eagleton director in 1994, she transformed the institute’s education programs to blend classroom learning with direct experience in politics and government.

Mandel will be succeeded by John Farmer Jr., a university professor and Justice Alan B. Handler scholar. Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general and senior counsel for the 9/11 commission, also leads the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience and has served as an Eagleton faculty associate since 2014.