CORRECTION APPENDED

The dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Alan A. Altshuler, announced yesterday that he will leave his post, ending a rocky two-year term marked by improvements in the school’s finances but blemished by faculty strife and waning confidence in his leadership.

Altshuler, 70, said he had always planned to serve only a few years as dean and that his “hoary” age spurred his decision to resign.

“Given that nothing happens very quickly in academic life, I have concluded that the time is now at least to initiate the process of transition,” he wrote in a letter to the GSD community yesterday.

Altshuler’s announcement comes at a time of rapid turnover at the helm of Harvard’s schools, and it means that the University’s next president will be left with at least three dean appointments upon assuming office.

Both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School are expected to welcome new deans on July 1, and the president’s office in Mass. Hall is expected to have a new occupant by that time. Altshuler’s announcement is the latest sign that an older generation of Harvard leaders is handing the reins to a new one. At the start of this academic year, the president and the heads of Harvard’s nine faculties had a combined 58 years of experience in their present posts. At the beginning of the next academic year, the 10 officials in those jobs will have a cumulative 23 years of experience in their positions.

Altshuler’s tenure at the GSD is one of the shortest Harvard deanships in recent memory, and much shorter than the 12-year terms served by his two predecessors. Since taking office, he has boosted financial aid for students, strengthened the previously cash-strapped school’s financial position, and doubled the number of senior women faculty, according to a University statement.

In his remaining months in office, Altshuler said he would focus in part on developing a five-year financial plan for GSD, completing faculty searches, and strengthening ties with other schools at the University.

Former University President Lawrence H. Summers, who first appointed Altshuler to be acting GSD dean in July 2004 and made him permanent dean seven months later, said in an e-mail that “in terms of positive accomplishment per year of service, few Harvard deans can match Alan Altshuler’s record.”

“He took on tough challenges and brought about important and need[ed] change in the life of the Graduate School of Design,” Summers wrote.

Just before Summers announced his own resignation in February, Altshuler praised the president’s “extraordinarily effective” leadership. “I have never heard a GSD faculty member express anger at President Summers,” he told The Crimson at the time.

Several GSD professors saw those comments as a sign of Altshuler’s supposed disconnect with members of his own faculty, who were said to be largely critical of Summers. Some faculty members were also concerned by the fact that Altshuler—though a professor of urban policy and planning—was a political scientist by training and had spent much of his academic career at the Kennedy School of Government, not the GSD.

In an e-mail, Altshuler declined to respond to questions asking whether his decision to step down was related to clashes with the faculty. But yesterday, even Altshuler’s critics offered words of support for the outgoing dean.

“We have a lot to thank him for stabilizing the school and launching an initiative for appointing faculty with diverse backgrounds,” Architecture Department Chair Toshiko Mori said in an e-mail. Last spring, Mori was one of several faculty members to call for a vote of no confidence in Altshuler’s leadership, The Crimson reported. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW.]

Jorge Silvetti, a professor of architecture, wrote in an e-mail that the faculty’s divisions over the school’s academic organization could be overcome.

“Dean Altshuler, while controversial in some of his actions, will leave the school in a very strong academic, administrative, and financial position as a result of his indefatigable work in defense and promotion of GSD interests,” he wrote.

Altshuler will take a year-long sabbatical and then return to the Harvard faculty, the University announced.

Interim President Derek C. Bok has been preparing for Altshuler’s departure since at least September, according to an individual close to the interim president. But when asked by The Crimson earlier this month if he had plans to resign, Altshuler replied: “I have not made any such decision. Your sources, I’m afraid, are not reliable.”

Several GSD professors also said they expected the dean would resign this year in light of his tense relationship with parts of the faculty.

Bok has assembled a group of eight GSD faculty members to assist him in compiling a list of potential candidates that he will recommend to the new president.

Paul Cote, a lecturer in landscape architecture and urban planning, wrote in an e-mail that the next dean of GSD should have the familiarity with information technology to foster collaboration among faculty members.

“It will be a missed opportunity if our new dean is not interested in this new frontier of design and collaboration,” wrote Cote, who is also the school’s assistant director of computer resources.

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Javier C. Hernandez can be reached at jhernand@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

Architecture Department Chair Toshiko Mori never publicly called for a vote of no confidence in Design School Dean Alan A. Altshuler's leadership this past winter. Mori does acknowledge that she and other department chairs warned Altshuler that such a vote had been proposed. The Oct. 24 news article, "GSD Dean To Step Down," inaccurately described this paper's own March 3 report on strife between Altshuler and department chairs. The March report never said Mori was an instigator of the no-confidence vote.