Minutes after President Teresa A. Sullivan introduced John Simon as the University's new executive vice president and provost yesterday, the administrator assumed the podium with a poise and confidence felt throughout the Rotunda's Dome Room.
"When you take a job like this, you drink from a fire hose," he joked to the crowd on hand.
Simon, who served as vice provost at Duke University for the past six years and chaired Duke's chemistry department for the five years prior to that, will take office effective Sept. 1. He will become the University's chief academic officer, overseeing the University's 11 schools, libraries, residential colleges and numerous other facilities and operations.
Simon's academic resume includes a bachelor's degree from Williams College, as well as a master's and doctorate from Harvard University.
His responsibilities include appointing deans, managing the University's academic budget and acting in place of the president if necessary. Simon said he hopes to focus efforts on student-faculty engagement.
"As technology is now changing and advancing, we should continue to be the leaders of [student-faculty engagement], but it's going to take some interesting discussions, some interesting rethinking about how we use the tools that are available today to still focus back on the student-faculty relationship," Simon said. "It's the human relationships that are important to me."
Simon succeeds Arthur Garson, who stepped down from the position in May. The search to replace him began four months prior to Garson's departure. The effort was led by former Education School Dean David Breneman.
"The search committee looked at the overall academic backgrounds and recommended to me finalists who came from a number of academic backgrounds," Sullivan said. "I do think it was
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