Provost Steven Lerman will step down from his post at the end of the calendar year, the University announced Wednesday.

He will take a yearlong sabbatical in California and will return to GW as the the A. James Clark Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Lerman was the head architect of GW’s ambitious 10-year, $110 million strategic plan, which was launched two years ago and outlines far-reaching goals like the addition of 100 faculty members and doubling the number of international students. Lerman served as the right hand to University President Steven Knapp during his nearly five years at GW, and was well known across campus for hosting pancake breakfasts in his home on the Mount Vernon Campus.

Lerman announced the move in a letter to colleagues, saying that “being part of the leadership team as well as a member of this distinguished faculty, and having the opportunity to work with such talented staff and students, has been an enormous privilege. One of the great joys of my job has been that I have learned something new here every single day.”

During his time as provost, Lerman oversaw appointing more than a dozen top administrators to their positions, including new posts like an associate vice provost for international strategy and a director for the University’s new STEM academy.

“Steve Lerman has been a terrific partner over the past five years,” said President Steven Knapp. “He led us through one of the most significant strategic planning processes in the university’s history and oversaw a significant restructuring of student affairs and the GW medical center. To all those efforts he brought a spirit of openness and collaboration that I hope will persist as a permanent feature of the university’s culture.”

Before coming to GW in 2010, Lerman spent 40 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a faculty member and administrator, and earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral engineering degrees there.

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