When he started the job in 1991, Knowles said, he had planned to serve about 10 years. He is currently serving his 11th year in a position whose average tenure has, in recent history, been about six years.

Knowles, who is the Houghton professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said he will return to teaching—but he said he has not yet decided whether he will return to the classroom immediately next fall.

“Now, after 11 very rewarding (if sometimes too abundantly busy) years, I have decided to return to the Faculty,” Knowles said in a statement released yesterday.

Raising Budgets and Buildings

When he returns to teaching, Knowles will rejoin the ranks of the Faculty he first entered in 1974 when he arrived at Harvard from Oxford University.

He took the helm of the Faculty in July 1991, as Neil L. Rudenstine was taking over the reigns of the University.

During his tenure, Knowles led the Faculty through a number of major initiatives in curricular reform, physical planning and fundraising.

He slashed budgets, raised money and built buildings.

Having faced a $11.7 million deficit upon his arrival, by the end of just his first semester as dean, Knowles announced that the deficit had fallen to $7.5 million.

He urged fiscal discipline throughout the Faculty—a move which did not earn him many friends. He came under fire when he dismissed 10 staff members at Harvard’s Semitic Museum in a cost-cutting measure.

But by 1996, just five years after his arrival, Knowles had cut the deficit by more than twenty-fold, to $530,000.

As he scrutinized budgets, Knowles also put undergraduate education under the microscope.

In 1992, he created the Educational Policy Committee to advise him on all curricular matters other than those related to the Core, including review and improvement of undergraduate concentrations.

Knowles also presided over the 1997 review of the Core Curriculum that led to the creation of the to the Quantitative Reasoning Core area.

And in recent years, Knowles has worked closely with Dean for Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82 to expand freshman seminar offerings.