Updated May 19 at 8:30 p.m.
Vicki Colvin will step down as provost June 30 after just one year in the position, President Christina Paxson P’19 announced in a campus-wide email Tuesday afternoon.
Colvin elected to leave her post as provost in order to pursue research in greater depth.
“I have always contributed to university service in a way that allowed me to pursue my many other academic interests, and I’ve learned this year, that while I love this job, I want to be able to engage in more substantial scholarship,” Colvin said, according to a University press release.
Colvin, who came to Brown from Rice University where she served as vice provost for research, was selected as Brown’s 12th provost in May 2014 following a nationwide search that lasted more than three months. She replaced Mark Schlissel P’15 in that role when he became president of the University of Michigan July 1.
Colvin’s successor will become the University’s fourth provost in six academic years.
Paxson will discuss plans to identify a new provost with Corporation members at the body’s meeting this weekend, said Cass Cliatt, vice president for communications.
That discussion will include deliberations about the scale of the search the University should undertake, Cliatt said. Searches for top administrators require substantial temporal and financial resources.
That commitment of time and money, now needed for the second consecutive year, makes Colvin's exit after just 12 months a setback to the University.
Nonetheless, the University is prepared to spend the time and money required to find an ideal candidate to replace Colvin, Cliatt said.
“It is not unusual if we might have to invest further. … Finding the best leadership for Brown is a priority,” she said.
The University has not decided if it will assemble another search committee or hire outside companies to assist it in identifying potential candidates, Cliatt said. These possibilities will also be discussed this weekend.
Still, the search for the next provost will not begin at square one. It will build on the efforts that led to Colvin’s selection last May, Cliatt said. Because the last search for a provost took place a year ago, the University already has “some knowledge of potential candidates” and an understanding of what community members are looking for in the University’s chief academic officer.
During her short tenure as provost, Colvin helped create a program in entrepreneurial education that will be piloted this summer, enlarged the responsibilities of the dean of the School of Professional Studies to encompass supporting digital education efforts and developing programs for alums, and oversaw the Deficit Reduction Working Group’s efforts to rein in the University’s operating budget deficit, Paxson wrote.
She also established a vice provost for the arts — a new administrative position — and advocated the construction of a new performing arts space, as well as significant renovations for the Sharpe Refectory.
Before starting her term as provost, Colvin told The Herald she hoped to establish a "small, collaborative lab" that would work on research of interest to her.
But even this attempt to pursue research in moderation was impossible while she served as provost, Colvin wrote in an email to The Herald Tuesday. "It was clear to me this April that there was no way I was going to be able to oversee even a small lab and be provost," she wrote.
Colvin will return to the University as a member of the faculty.
