Native American Cultural Center (NACC) Director Ted Van Alst will leave his post after four years on the job.

Van Alst will move to the University of Montana, where he has accepted a position as Senior Assistant Professor of Native American Studies with a joint appointment in the College of Forestry and Conservation.

In a Friday email to the boards of the NACC and La Casa, Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway noted that Yale’s Native American population has more than tripled in size under Van Alst’s tenure. As an assistant dean at Yale College, Van Alst helped coordinate both Family Weekend and the Cultural Connections preorientation program for incoming students.

Holloway has named Christopher Cutter as the NACC’s interim director. Cutter, a fellow of Ezra Stiles College, is a research supervisor and instructor in the departments of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry, and has also served on both the advisory and executive boards of the NACC.

He also announced Amanda Lynn Hernandez MED ’16, an MD/PhD candidate in Neurology, as interim director of La Casa after the departure of its director, Rosalinda Garcia, earlier this year. Hernandez has been a graduate assistant at La Casa for the past four years.

Search committees will be formed to help appoint permanent directors for both cultural centers.