Robert Pastor, vice president of International Affairs, will resign at the end of this year once a plan to dismantle the current Office of International Affairs is fully completed, according to a statement President Neil Kerwin sent to AU's deans, academic department chairs and program directors Sept. 6.
Pastor, who has headed up the office since it was established in September 2002, will remain a tenured professor at the university after he formally ends his time as vice president of International Affairs on Dec. 31. Pastor qualified for a one-year sabbatical and may decide to take it following his resignation, he said.
Pastor will now spend part of his time as interim co-director of the Elders Project. The Elders Project is a newly-formed group of international statesmen that tries to tackle some of the world's problems. Group members include former South African President Nelson Mandela, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. As interim co-director, Pastor will help define the group's strategies until it can find a permanent chief executive officer, according to the statement.
"With the dismantling of the Office of International Affairs, there is, of course, no need for a vice president," Pastor said. "President Kerwin and I both agreed that it would be helpful if I would remain until the end of the year to assure that the transition is smooth and the movement of OIA units to other parts of the campus is done properly and effectively and in a manner that could permit them to become even stronger."
Kerwin, who officially became university president on Sept. 1, decided to dismantle the Office of International Affairs so he could help work on a new set of goals for the university's international work and the structure for a new organization to oversee those international program as part of AU's new strategic plan, according to the statement.
Since Pastor became head of the Office of International Affairs, there have been a number of changes and additions to the university's international work. AU Abroad, which had 13 programs available to students in 2002, now has 105 programs available in 34 countries.
The office also created the Abroad at AU program, which allows students from other countries to come and study at the university for either a semester or a full year. The program expanded this year to allow 74 students to participate. Additionally, the university helped to establish ABTI-American University of Nigeria. AU previously helped establish the American University of Sharjah, which is located in the United Arab Emirates. In 2005, the Institute of International Education gave an Andrew Haskell Award to AU for internationalizing the university.
Pastor also helped establish the Center on North American Studies and the Center on Democracy and Election Management, as well as organizing the Commission on Federal Election Reform.
AU had announced plans in 2005 to help establish a university in China that would have been similar to the ones in Nigeria and the U.A.E., The Eagle previously reported. Those plans fell through shortly after former President Benjamin Ladner agreed to resign in October of that year following an investigation into charges that he had misused university funds, Pastor said.
"The decision to establish an American-style university in China was immensely complicated with serious implications for American University in many ways, including the amount of time that senior management would have to devote to making the project successful," he said. "These issues came to a head shortly after the resignation of Dr. Ladner, and given the uncertainty within the university, after consultation with cabinet and faculty, [then-Interim President Kerwin] decided that AU should not go forward."
While Kerwin should be free to decide how to organize AU's international programs, Pastor said he is disappointed that the office will now be dismantled
"I personally believe that American University had set a gold standard in designing a cabinet-level position to give priority to these international programs, so therefore I'm disappointed that the office will now be dismantled," he said.
