College Provost Barry Scherr, who had announced in March that he would leave his position before spring 2010, will continue to serve as provost through June 2011, College President Jim Yong Kim said in an e-mail to the Dartmouth community early Thursday morning.
Scherr, who became provost in 2001, told The Dartmouth that Kim asked him to stay on for the first year of his presidency to help prepare for the College's reaccreditation hearing, which is scheduled to begin in November 2010. After realizing how much work the preparations demand, however, Scherr decided to stay on for an additional year.
"It's a long, time-consuming process," Scherr said. "The process requires even more work than it did 10 or 20 years ago."
Administrators have already started preparing for the accreditation hearing, Scherr said, adding the process takes up to two years of work.
"President Kim thought it would be good if I could see that through the end," he said.
Scherr, who has spearheaded Kim's transition process in recent months, said that process has advanced as expected, and said that his decision to stay on as provost was not related to issues with the transition.
In an interview with Dartmouth's Office of Public Affairs, Scherr noted that his decision to remain in the position of provost will allow for some "institutional memory for the central administration."
Both Kim and his strategic adviser Steven Kadish were previous outsiders to the College, so much of the transition has been spent familiarizing the two with Dartmouth.
"It obviously takes time for someone who hadn't been at Dartmouth to get to know the campus," Scherr said.
In addition to preparing for the accreditation process, Scherr will conduct a review of the role of the Provost's Office at the College in comparison to its functions at other schools, Kim wrote in the e-mail.
Kim also wrote that he wants to ensure Dartmouth has the "best structure in place" before beginning to look for Scherr's provost.
"By agreeing to stay on, [Scherr] allows us to have his steady hand during this period of study, search and installation of the new Provost," he wrote in the e-mail.
Scherr, the Mandel Family Professor of Russian, said he plans to continue teaching as a member of the Dartmouth faculty after he leaves his position in the Provost's Office. He also hopes to expand his research once a new provost is hired, he said.
The College last underwent the reaccreditation process from 1999 to 2000. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges evaluates all institutions of higher education in the region roughly every 10 years.
Article first posted at 9:40 a.m. on July 9, 2009.
