James B. Young, M.D. began his tenure Tuesday as the associate provost for faculty affairs after stepping down from his former positions as Northwestern professor of medicine and Feinberg School of Medicine dean for faculty affairs.

“Jim’s efforts will focus on faculty matters, including hiring, recruiting, retention, diversity and policy development,” Linzer said in a Northwestern news brief.

In his seventeen years working for Northwestern, Young often sought out opportunities that spanned a variety of the school’s departments.

“It’s been a very good place to develop research initiatives that span different departments,” Young said. “I’ve had collaborations with people in other departments in the medical school consistently since I’ve been at Northwestern.”

Young explained that he would be continuing in the footsteps of current associate provost John Margolis, who is now the dean and chief executive officer of Northwestern University in Qatar.

Young said that as associate provost he would focus on matters related to faculty recruitment. Before joining Northwestern’s faculty in 1991, Young spent 14 years working for Harvard’s Medical School. During that time, Young worked primarily at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, one of Harvard’s affiliated hospitals.

Since beginning his work for Feinberg, however, Young has shifted his focus more towards laboratory research as well as administrative duties.

“One of the attractive things about this position for me was the opportunity to see how the rest of the university outside the medical school operates,” Young said, “and to try to improve communication among various parts of the university.”