Vice President for Campus Life Kim Goff-Crews announced this week that she will leave her post at the end of the academic year to take on a similar role at Yale University.

[img id=”90942″ align=”left”/] Goff-Crews, who received B.A. and J.D. degrees from Yale, will become Secretary of the University and take up the newly-created position of Vice President for Student Life at Yale.

President Robert Zimmer and Goff-Crews both sent out e-mails Tuesday to University administrators announcing the departure.

“Although I welcome the opportunity to serve my alma mater, leaving the University of Chicago and all those I have come to know is profoundly bittersweet. I fully believe in the importance of the institution’s specific mission to change the world through the power of ideas,” Goff-Crews wrote in an e-mail to her colleagues.

University spokesperson Steven Kloehn said that a general announcement of Goff-Crews’s departure will be made at the beginning of winter quarter. In his memo to senior administrators, Zimmer said that the University is launching a national search for Goff-Crews’s successor, who would assume the post at the beginning of the next academic year.

Prior to joining the University in 2007, Goff-Crews served as Dean of Students at Wellesley College.

During her tenure at the U of C, Goff-Crews oversaw a transition to gender-neutral housing, restructured student health services, and expanded the University’s dining program to offer more options to students. She also helped expand the services of the Office of Spiritual Life, Office of Multicultural Students Affairs, and the Office of LBGTQ Student Life.

Goff-Crews strongly defended the University’s commitment to freedom of expression. After protesters interrupted a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2009, Goff-Crews wrote an opinion piece in the Maroon calling the incident a “challenge and an opportunity” to examine the importance of free discourse.

“Free expression is more than just a platitude. It’s what makes our common endeavor worthwhile. It is a principle we cannot compromise,” she wrote.

In an e-mail to colleagues, Goff-Crews expressed her hope for a smooth transition.

“I feel privileged to work with each of you and look forward to continuing to work toward our mutual goals while I am here. In the meantime, the work continues and the senior leadership of Campus and Student Life and I will prepare for a seamless transition,” Goff-Crews wrote.