Lisa Lynch will depart from her role as provost and executive vice-president of Academic Affairs by this summer, according to a Jan. 21 email to the Brandeis community from University President Ron Liebowitz. Lynch first stepped into the role in June 2016. According to the email, Lynch will be taking a year- long sabbatical and will then return to Brandeis to continue in her position as the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Liebowitz wrote in the email that the process for selecting the next Provost will be announced shortly. The email did not specify why Lynch was stepping down. 

Before her current positions, Lynch served in two administrative positions at the University: the University’s interim president for the 2015-2016 academic year, as well as the Dean of the Heller School for six years between 2008 and 2014. 

Liebowitz credited Lynch with making “numerous significant and transformative contributions” during her time in administrative roles over the last decade. Among those contributions were bolstering the University’s diversity programs, hiring new deans for the professional schools and the School of Arts and Sciences and finding new directors of various campus institutions — including the Rose Art Museum and the Department of Athletics, according to Liebowitz’s email. Lynch also led the University’s reaccreditation process and increased the school’s research funding, according to the email. Liebowitz called Lynch a “superb colleague,” saying he would miss her “smarts, her deep commitment to the University, and her sense of humor.” 

In an email to the Justice on Jan. 27, Lynch said her key contributions were her hirings and fundraising. “I am thrilled with the people that I have been able to recruit to key positions to support our academic mission and student life at Brandeis,” she wrote.  These positions include Dean of Arts and Sciences Dorothy Hodgson, Dean of the Heller School David Weil, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Raymond Ou, Athletic Director Lauren Haynie and more.

Lynch said in her email that her fundraising was some of her most impactful leadership as Provost. “More than $1 million in seed funding support to faculty has already resulted in more than $7 million in new sponsored research and significant advances in scholarship,” she wrote. 

According to her email, Lynch will spend her sabbatical year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Work and Employment Research, researching the future of labor. She also said she plans to work on two different book projects. 

In addition to her time at Brandeis, Lynch has served as a policy associate at the Economic Policy Institute and the National Bureau of Economic Research for 27 years, and as a research fellow for the Institute of Labor Economics for 19 years.  Between 2004 and 2009, she was the chair, then director, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  

—Editor's Note: This article was amended to spell President Ron Liebowitz's name correctly.