When the announcement came Monday that Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman ‘79 M.S. ‘81 Ph.D. ’85 would leave Stanford to become the president of Bucknell University, it was the same day he brought home his newborn son, Cole, from the hospital.

For Bravman, a Farm mainstay for 35 years, the chaotic day was only the most recent convergence of family life and Stanford. He completed his undergraduate education at the University, stayed on for graduate study and moved to being a professor in the last years pursuing his doctorate. Married to another materials science professor, Wendy Wright, residing on campus and spending “99 percent” of his time here, Bravman said he often thought he would remain here forever.

“I never expected to leave Stanford,” said Bravman, 52. “I expected to spend my entire adult life here and retire.”

Speaking to The Daily after the unexpected announcement, Bravman laid out the reasons for his departure, the principal values and lessons he gained from his time here and his priorities for his few months left on campus.

In order to leave for another institution, Bravman said, he had to avoid direct competition with Stanford by avoiding the milieu of top-tier research universities.

“It had to be something in my mind that was a special opportunity but also had to be a different place from Stanford,” Bravman said.

The challenge of finding the Stanford spirit he believed in at an institution operating in a different sphere, Bravman said, narrowed the possibilities considerably.

“You put all those things together, that’s actually a small constellation of opportunities,” he said.

Bravman said he initially turned down the offer from Bucknell, finding himself content at Stanford. He was persuaded, however, to attend dinner in San Francisco for 30 minutes with the chairman of Bucknell’s board.

“The rest, as they say, is history, but we really hit it off,” Bravman said. “I really found it a very compelling two-hour conversation instead of a 30-minute conversation, and I immediately resonated with him, and that opened my eyes and my willingness to explore a bit more.”

“And I start meeting people, and I find this is a school in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, and people were just tremendous,” he continued. “And the students, the staff, the faculty, they really believe in the school, the alumni, the parents…like Stanford, it’s a beloved institution by its people. And that spoke volumes to me. It wasn’t just a place to go to school.”

What he saw proved too much to resist: on July 1, Bravman will become Bucknell’s president. He said he expects to move to Pennsylvania with his family a week beforehand.

Before he departs, most of Bravman’s top priorities will be filling key administrative posts in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. In addition to the appointment of English professor Nicholas Jenkins as the new director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), Bravman will be finalizing the search for a new director for the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) to succeed history professor Norman Naimark.

The priority closest to Bravman’s heart, however, may be the Freshman-Sophomore College (FroSoCo), where he has served as its first and only dean.

“We have to find a great successor in FroSoCo,” Bravman said. “I think of FroSoCo as very much my program. I started it, I was the only dean. And so I want someone, and we will find someone, who has the same kind of passion for undergraduate education, and wants to do some of the things that I have done–and also invent his or her own things in the dorm there.”

Bravman added that he felt heartened learning that 50 percent of freshmen in the program will return for their sophomore year, even after his departure.

“The announcement came out before they had to sign up to stay–I would have felt bad if it was the other way,” Bravman said. “They had the option, and they elected to stay. So I think, and this is very important, we’ve tried to create a community that’s above any of the senior staff.”

The new director of FroSoCo will also be a different person than whoever succeeds him as vice provost, ending the arrangement that had him filling both posts since 1999.

Bravman, who has also been vice provost for eleven years, said he was proud of what had been accomplished during his time, citing faculty-student engagement in programs such as Sophomore College, the arts intensive and overseas studies.

He added that he is optimistic about the future of VPUE in upcoming years after a difficult time for the University budget.

“We weathered last year’s financial storm,” he said. “We got through that, it was very difficult, but the whole University took the hard path and got it done. So we’re looking at modest growth when our peers are still looking at shrinking budgets.”

This commitment to moving forward and seeking improvements, which he called “one of the hallmarks of Stanford University,” was one Bravman said he recognized in Bucknell.

“We can pat ourselves on the back occasionally, but we don’t do that very often,” he said. “We’re always talking about, how are we going to be better? How are we going to do more? We do it in physics, we do it in football, we do it everywhere in between. The same thing is true at Bucknell.”

Bravman closed by reasserting the admiration he had for Stanford, and the shared values he hoped to find across the country.

“I’m not leaving Stanford,” he said. “I’m changing careers to a great new institution but Wendy and I love Stanford, more than you can possibly imagine.”

“One of the things that attracted me also about Bucknell–they weren’t looking for someone who was not happy at their institution,” he added. “They love the fact that I love Stanford. They love that. And of course they’re hoping that I develop that loyalty to Bucknell. It was very attractive to me that they weren’t looking for someone who was dissatisfied. They were looking for someone who was very hard to move. And that was me.”