Two Yale professors will join the Provost’s Office as deputy provosts responsible for faculty development and science and technology this academic year, officials announced in mid-August.

Judy Chevalier ’89 and Steven Girvin will replace Kim Bottomly, the former deputy provost for science, technology and faculty development, who left the University last spring to become president of Wellesley College. As of Sept. 1, Chevalier will be responsible for faculty development and Girvin for science and technology, Provost Andrew Hamilton said.

That Bottomly’s job would be split in two signals the growing relevance of both areas, Hamilton said.

“The decision to separate responsibilities reflects the expanding scope and increasing importance of both the faculty development and the science and engineering portfolios,” he said in an e-mail.

The faculty development position will cover mentoring, career development, diversification and work-life issues throughout Yale. Chevalier will lead the implementation of the new tenure system and continue the faculty diversity initiative announced in November 2005. Under this initiative, the University will hire 30 new minority and 30 new female professors by 2012.

Girvin said he is still learning the ins and outs of the job, but he already has some priorities as he assumes the science and technology portfolio. Among those priorities are thinking about how the newly-acquired Bayer HealthCare site will be developed over the next one to 100 years, assisting the University’s science departments in faculty recruiting, and improving scientific computing at Yale. He said he also plans to address interdisciplinary communication across the University community.

The 137-acre “West Campus” in West Haven and Orange, which Yale agreed to purchase this summer, increased the size of Yale’s campus by approximately one third. It is only the latest in a series of major capital projects in the sciences, including a billion-dollar initiative to build and renovate facilities on Science Hill.

Chevalier, who Hamilton described as “perfect” for the position, is a finance professor in the School of Management who also has teaching responsibilities in the Economics Department. She earned her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. At Yale, she is a member of the Women Faculty Forum.

Girvin is a physics and applied physics professor who earned his doctorate from Princeton University. He served as a staff physicist at the National Bureau of Standards, now called NIST, before becoming a professor at Indiana University. A member of the National Academy of Science, Girvin came to Yale in 2001.