In a rare departure of a tenured Faculty member, Michael J. Donoghue, director of the Harvard University Herbaria, will leave Harvard for a position at Yale University at the end of this academic year.

Donoghue, a professor of biology, began his tenure at Harvard in 1993, becoming director of the herbaria in 1995. He will join Yale's recently formed Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) in July as the Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

The herbaria, located on Divinity Ave., houses libraries and a large collection of plant and fungal specimens.

Donoghue said he was attracted to Yale because he will be able to play an important role in the department's development. The EEB branched off of Yale's main biology department two years ago as part of an effort to "make Yale a leader in Environmental and Evolutionary Sciences," according to the EEB Web site.

"Yale represents a real chance and opportunity to build a program in the area of biodiversity," Donoghue said.

"I'm just getting a positive vibration about making that change and being involved in building that program."

Yale's ecology and evolutionary biology program is far less established than the one at Harvard, which has the largest collection of botanical specimens of any university, though Yale is making a concerted effort to improve its program.

"The resources to do empirical research [at Harvard] are much better than they are at Yale," said Professor of Biology and Curator of the Paleobotanical Collections in the Herbaria Andrew H. Knoll. "I think the attraction as it is to the Yale department is to be part of a new effort trying to get off the ground."