Jonathan Cole ’64 will step down as provost after 13 years to return to teaching and research, continuing a Columbia career that began when he enrolled as an undergraduate in 1960.

David Cohen has been responsible for overseeing 29 departments of instruction in the humanities and physical and social sciences, and the faculty of six schools, including the College. PHOTOS: JOE PINIERO

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• Bollinger Becomes University's 19th President • Cole, Cohen To Leave Administrative Posts • Campus Bulletins • Transitions • Alumni Bulletins • In Lumine Tuo • College Honors 65 Students at Awards and Prizes Ceremony • More Than 1,000 Take Part In Community Outreach

Two of Columbia’s top administrators, Jonathan R. Cole ’64 and David Cohen, have announced their resignations in order to return to the faculty. Cole, who has served as provost since 1989, and Cohen, who has been vice president and dean of the faculty of the Arts and Sciences since 1995, are expected to remain in their administrative posts through the 2002–03 academic year to allow a smooth transition in the administration of President Lee C. Bollinger, who took office on June 1.

Cole, the University’s chief academic officer, wrote in a letter to Columbia faculty and administrators that he had “decided that after 13 years, it is time for me to return to teaching and research, to new projects and to the many that have remained in limbo since 1989.”

Cole will have served longer than any other provost except William H. Carpenter, whose tenure lasted 15 years, from 1912–27. Columbia has been Cole’s academic home for 42 years, since he entered the College as an undergraduate. As a sociologist of science, he explored the nature of quality in scientific research and discovery. As an administrator, he has been devoted to improving the quality of the University’s faculty, students, scholarship and programs.

Cole led many initiatives at Columbia that have enhanced research and teaching, built new programs and provided academic and other support that attracted new faculty. As vice president for Arts and Sciences from 1987–89 and then as provost, Cole collaborated with administrators and deans to reform the budget process, strengthen tenure review and make strategic investments in departments and multi-disciplinary programs that have competitive advantages because of Columbia’s location. Cole’s goals were based on the recognition that improvements in the quality of life for faculty and students would lead to the recruitment and retention of the most talented minds to Columbia. Cole also was instrumental in the creation of a Columbia laboratory school for children, which will open in fall 2003, and his goal of making the campus environs more welcoming to faculty led Cole to spearhead the opening of the Labyrinth Bookstore on Morningside Heights, the first major scholarly bookstore in New York in many years.

Another of Cole’s significant achievements has been his collaboration with the leaders of the Washington Heights campus to stimulate growth in research and the recruitment and retention of world-class faculty. He was instrumental in initiating the Audubon Research Park to advance basic research and biotechnology transfer at Columbia.
Among other initiatives, Cole led the effort to modernize the University libraries, including the renovation of Butler Library, the expansion of online services and the development of a remote storage facility shared with Princeton and the New York Public Library. He led the development of a center for digital media intended to enhance interactive teaching and, as part of the budget reform, helped create an Academic Quality Fund for innovative and interdisciplinary teaching programs.

“Jonathan has been a central figure in Columbia’s continuing growth in scholarship and teaching, as well as its renaissance in the Health Sciences,” said David Stern, chairman of the Board of Trustees. “His intellectual drive, strategic thinking and implementation skills have kept Columbia at the forefront of cutting-edge research as well as superior undergraduate and graduate education.”

Cole earned a Ph.D. in 1969 from Columbia and was a member of the faculty before he became provost; he holds the John Mitchell Mason Professorship. His scholarship has examined the social organization and structure of science, the growth of scientific knowledge, the treatment of women in science, issues of fairness and justice in the reward system of science, the peer review system for allocating scientific resources, and the relationship between uses and abuses of scientific evidence. In recent years, he has written about aspects of higher education and the problems of scientific and technological literacy in the United States.

In his letter to faculty and staff, Cole referred to the rarity in today’s world of spending an entire academic career at a single institution. “I have never been willing or able to leave,” he said. “Now I look forward to serving Columbia again as a member of its faculty — taking in and producing some of the gritty energy that I associate with it and love.”

Cohen also wrote a letter to the faculty explaining his decision. In it, he said, “Well before President Rupp announced his plans, I had assumed it would be appropriate for me to alter course at the age of 65, a milestone I will realize at the end of the next academic year.” Cohen has been responsible for overseeing 29 departments of instruction in the humanities and physical and social sciences, and the faculty of Columbia College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of International and Public Affairs, the School of General Studies, Continuing Education and the School of the Arts.

His many accomplishments at Columbia include increasing the distinction of Arts and Sciences departments, most notably anthropology, economics and physics; fostering an environment of scholarship across departmental and school borders; improving funding for Arts and Sciences graduate students and enhancing their academic experience; balancing the Arts and Sciences budget and making the administration more efficient; and implementing a faculty-driven academic review process.

“From his expert management of the Arts and Sciences budget and administration to his vision for enhanced academic disciplines and new scholarly collaborations, David Cohen has played a vital role in the advances that Columbia has achieved in recent years,” praised Rupp.

An eminent neurobiologist, Cohen graduated from from Harvard in 1960 and received his Ph. D. from UC Berkeley in 1963. Before coming to Columbia, where he also is professor of biological sciences and of psychiatry, he was provost at Northwestern University. Prior to that, he served as vice president for research and dean of the graduate school there. From 1979–86, Cohen held numerous positions at SUNY Stony Brook, and from 1968–79, he served as associate professor and professor of physiology and chairman of neuroscience at the University of Virginia.

Cohen began his teaching career as assistant professor of physiology at Western Reserve and was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physiology and the Brain Research Institute at UCLA in 1963–64. He has served as president of the Society for Neuroscience and vice president of the National Society for Medical Research. He was chairman of the Association of American Medical Colleges in 1989–90 and was chairman of that organization’s advisory panel on biomedical research from 1990–92. For several years, Cohen was a member of the advisory committee for the Directorate of Biological, Behavioral and Social Sciences for the National Science Foundation.

Cohen served as a member of the executive committee of the Governor’s Scientific Advisory Committee of the State of Illinois, and was a member of the advisory committee of the Illinois State Board of Education’s Illinois Scientific Literacy Program from 1989–91. He is a director of the Research Libraries Group, former chairman of the scientific and technical advisory committee of the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and former chairman of the administrative committee of the board of overseers of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Cohen has written approximately 100 scientific articles, chapters and abstracts and 30 non-scientific articles.