Provost Barry Scherr, who was to remain in his current position up to June 2011, will step down as College provost to pursue his academic work, College President Jim Yong Kim announced in a campus-wide e-mail on Monday. Scherr is the latest in a series of high-level College officials to announce their departures in the last few months.
Kim's e-mail did not specify the date on which Scherr, who became provost in 2001, will end his term in that position. In an interview with The Dartmouth on Monday, Scherr said he will step down once Kim has appointed an interim replacement.
Kim told The Dartmouth he hopes to appoint an acting provost "very soon," but did not specify a timeline.
Kim said he hopes to have appointed a permanent provost within six to nine months, after completing an international search to fill the position.
He said he hopes to form a search committee to begin examining candidates for that position soon.
Scherr had first announced he would step down by spring 2010. Kim and Scherr then announced in July that Scherr would stay on for up to two years, until 2011.
At the time of that announcement, Scherr told The Dartmouth that Kim had asked him to stay on up to an additional year in order to help prepare for the College's reaccreditation, which is scheduled to begin in November 2010.
"President Kim thought it would be good if I could see that through the end," Scherr told The Dartmouth in July.
On Monday, Kim said that Scherr will continue to coordinate the College's reaccreditation process through the end of this year. Scherr is currently working on a report for the accreditation, the first draft of which should be completed in December, Kim said. At that point, Scherr will turn the report over to his successor.
Scherr had also previously told the Dartmouth Office of Public Affairs that his decision to remain in the position of provost up to June 2011 would allow for some "institutional memory for the central administration" during Kim's transition process.
Kim told The Dartmouth on Monday that the College's current financial situation accelerated that transition period.
"If we were in a situation that was just great, then I think that one could say, Take more time, study the situation,'" Kim said. "Because every college is under such pressure, we now have to be out of transition mode and into working mode."
Scherr's announcement follows the abrupt resignation of former Dean of the College Tom Crady in August. Former Dean of Undergraduate Students Rovana Popoff announced her departure from the College in September. Former Dean of First-Year Students Gail Zimmerman was laid off at the end of February, after the implementation of College-wide budget cuts. Assistant Dean of First-Year Students Meg Hancock's one-year contract was also not renewed for this year.
Scherr said the recent administrative turnover at Dartmouth is not unusual.
"It is not atypical for people to leave office for a variety of reasons," Scherr said. "For my case at least, people realize I've put in a very long time in administrative work."
Both Kim and Scherr said they do not believe the administrative changes will have a negative effect on the College.
"I think the biggest impact is that there will be a lot of people having to get used to a new group of administrators and form new bonds," Scherr said. "I think that people who have been in administrative work have to get used to doing that."
Scherr said that he will have no direct role in selecting his successor, although he will meet with whomever is appointed.
"Hopefully, I can hand [the position] off in a way so it's in good shape," Scherr said, adding that he anticipates a gradual transition process.
Kim previously told The Dartmouth that he wanted Scherr to conduct a comparative review of the role of the Provost's Office at the College in comparison to its functions at other schools to ensure that Dartmouth had the "best structure in place" before beginning to look for a new permanent replacement.
Kim said he is now "confident that they are well enough informed," about the position to install Scherr's successor.
"It was always up to two years,'" Kim said. "We didn't know how long it would take to study the provost position. At this point, we've come to the conclusion that we know enough about it to get a committee together to get a permanent position as soon as possible."
After stepping down as provost, Scherr will continue to serve as the Mandel Family Professor of Russian at the College.
"Going back to research has become very attractive," Scherr said, noting that he had put that work "on hold" while serving as provost.
