The Office of Career Services (OCS) will enter the upcoming semester without its expert on job placement for graduate students.

Kimberly G. Delgizzo, who has served as the associate director of OCS, will leave Harvard after this semester to become the director of Brown University’s Career Center.

Delgizzo said she was not actively looking to leave Harvard, but “the opportunity presented itself.”

Delgizzo has not set an official date for her departure, according to OCS Director William Wright-Swadel, but he estimates it to be sometime in mid-February.

During her five-and-a-half year tenure at Harvard, Delgizzo specialized in counseling both undergraduates looking into graduate school and Ph.D. candidates already at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

With Delgizzo’s departure, OCS will lose its most experienced counselor for graduate students, said Wright-Swadel.

“She is a simultaneously an exceptional counselor, educator, administrator,” Wright-Swadel said. “She has taken the time to help students understand where they want to go in life, while also building strong alumni ties with former GSAS students.”

Three years ago, Delgizzo co-wrote a pamphlet on professional development for graduate students.

Wright-Swadel credited her for forging a partnership between OCS, the Bok Center for Teaching and GSAS.

“She was a key player in unifying those important forces,” he said.

According to Barbara Peoples, who has been the interim director of Brown’s Career Center since August, Delgizzo’s experiences with a range of university affiliates made her Brown’s top choice to lead the center.

“She is a clinician who has worked with students, someone who has a real creative vision and someone who has fabulous experience with community relations,” Peoples said. “She has dealt successfully with all three divisions of our major population—undergraduates, graduate students and alumni—before.”

Peoples added that Delgizzo will also be working closely with Brown’s alumni and faculty, in addition to students, at Brown.

“We are very pleased that she worked under Bill Wright-Swadel, who is a preeminent leader in this field—she’s learned from one the best,” Peoples said.

OCS has not begun a search for Delgizzo’s successor, Wright-Swadel said yesterday.

He said he plans to put together a committee and launch a national search after the winter break.

“I’m confident that we will find someone passionate and talented for the job,” Wright-Swadel said.

OCS will likely secure a replacement by the end of next semester, he said.

“Since Ph.D. students work year-round, it is entirely appropriate for someone to start working here at the beginning of the summer,” he said.

In the interim semester, OCS will hire a temporary replacement to take care of administrative duties.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.