On January 3, Janina Montero will become Brown's first-ever vice president for campus life and student services. Currently dean of student life at Princeton, Montero will assume responsibility for a wide array of departments related to undergraduate life: athletics, food services, the Third World Center, the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, and the offices of the chaplaincy, residential life, and student life. Next July, Montero will also be responsible for the offices of admissions and financial aid.
Coordinating the activities of this many offices may sound daunting, but Montero, who grew up in Argentina and Uruguay and earned a Ph.D. in Latin-American literature at the University of Pennsylvania, has done it before. When she started at Princeton in 1993, the school had just made a similar decision to consolidate student services. "Once you look at student services as a global entity," she says, " you see not only the potential relationships between these things, but opportunities."
Provost William S. Simmons '60 will also fill a brand-new position. After a year as provost, he is combining his administrative and academic skills to fill the job of senior vice president for academic outreach and affiliated programs. Simmons will oversee a range of Brown-associated programs: the Annenberg Institute, the John Carter Brown Library, the Haffenreffer Museum, the Watson Institute for International Studies, and Campus Compact. Dean of the Faculty Kathryn Spoehr will serve as interim provost until a candidate is selected, this time from within the ranks of the University.
The change is a welcome one for Simmons, a Providence native who hopes to see the institutes become a resource for the city as well as the campus. One of his first challenges will be to oversee planning for a new campus museum. Originally planned to be housed off campus in the Old Stone Bank building, the museum will include the collections currently housed in the Haffenreffer Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island. "A museum," Simmons says, "is a great example of something that can have an impact far beyond a university at the same time as its resources can be funneled into teaching and research."
In other administrative changes, Leonard A. Schlesinger '72, who since last October has served as senior vice president for development, has left the University for more lucrative enterprises. During his short tenure, Schlesinger helped the University rake in $110 million in contributions and reorganized his department - efforts that apparently did not go unnoticed out-side Brown. Schlesinger is departing for "a number of opportunities," he says, "that were impossible to ignore." The former Harvard Business School professor will remain a part-time consultant to the University. Jim Husson leaves his job as executive director of capital giving to become the new development vice president, while Ron Margolin, who has been acting vice president for corporate and foundation relations, becomes vice president for international advancement and volunteer engagement. Steven Calvert, the two-year vice president for alumni relations, resigned from his post in late July. A search committee, headed by Brown Alumni Association president Jerome Vascellaro, is looking for a replacement.
