Monday, August 29 A. John Bramley announced his decision to step down as the senior vice president and provost of the University of Vermont. Bramley will continue in his role as provost until June 30, 2006 when he will take a leave from the university. It is unclear whether Bramley will return to teach at the University of Vermont after his leave.

This is not the first time that Bramley has announced his plans to step down as provost. In September of 2003 Bramley announced his decision to return to teaching and research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, but two months later he announced that he “had a change of heart” and planned to stay on as provost. Bramley began as provost in 2001 under interim President Edwin Colodny, and originally planned to return to teaching and research after his service as an interim, but President Fogel persuaded him to stay on until now.

Prior to his post as Provost, Bramley taught as a professor of Animal Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The chair of the Animal Sciences Department, Dr. Thomas McFadden could make no comment on the likelihood of Bramley’s return to teaching in the department, but said that the department would gladly welcome Bramley back as he is, “exactly the type of terrific senior faculty and researcher that the department needs.”

One of the major issues that Provost Bramley has been dealing with is the need for over eighty new faculty positions across all departments due to the increasing size of the student body.

It is likely that some of these positions will be left to be handed out by the next provost. Professor George Moyser, Chair of the Political Science Department, noted that it is important that whoever succeeds Bramley as Provost be as efficient as possible in handing out the remaing positions among the departments so that the departments have time to form decent search boards. Dr. McFadden also stressed the necessity of speed in the hiring of additional faculty to keep up with the increased enrollment and maintain a high quality of teaching.

The search for a new Provost can take as long as twelve-eighteen months, the search committee is already being put together and President Fogel hopes to announce who will be chairing the committee shortly.