New provost Stephen Director addressed the Faculty Senate yesterday and offered a sweeping view of his vision for the university, which focused on giving individual colleges their own administrative and budgetary responsibilities.

Director also answered questions about the recent abrupt departure of former College of Arts and Sciences Dean Jim Stellar.

“We talked about the future directions of the university and Jim’s view was, and this is in discussions that I had with him, that it was his time to step down,” Director said during a question and answer period after his address. “And it was his choice to step down as quickly as he did. And there’s nothing negative about this, he did an excellent job as dean.”

Director later told The News that no timeline has been set in forming a committee to find a new Arts and Sciences dean, and cited Stellar’s 10 years in his post as a reason Stellar stepped down. He stressed Stellar is going on sabbatical on his own terms.

Bruce Ronkin is interim dean.

Thomas Sherman, an associate professor of mathematics, asked Director if Stellar’s departure marked a change in how the College of Arts and Sciences was run. Director responded that the new college-based approach to governing and budgeting would be a significant change, and that he was also interested in examining the efficiency of the standard five-year model of co-op and classes.

“Unless we keep all things exactly the same as they are [changes will not happen],” Director said. “But we can’t do that. Universities can’t just stay the same all the time.”

Still, some senators seemed skeptical. Pharmacy professor Barbara Waszczak said she had been a friend of Stellar’s for years and found it difficult to believe what she had heard about his departure.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that he voluntarily stepped down from his office,” she told Director, who responded that Stellar left on his own terms.

Director’s address to the Senate took up the majority of the meeting, held in Raytheon Amphitheater yesterday. He addressed the qualities he felt made universities “great,” then discussed his plan for Northeastern for the year ahead.

Director introduced a plan to move budgetary control from a centralized position in the university to individual colleges, placing the bulk of responsibilities on deans. The proposed decentralized approach to governance and budgeting will allow each college to address its own needs, he said.

“Each college is different, and they need to develop a process that works for them,” Director said.

Under the new system, which is still in early planning stages, colleges would receive income from several sources, including tuition and student fees, Director said. The colleges would be responsible for paying their faculty and staff as well as what Director called “taxes,” which would be used to fund central university resources, like the Northeastern University Division of Public Safety and Residential Life, as well as units within the university that don’t have independent sources of income.

Director said he hoped the new budget system would be implemented within two academic years.

Director’s address also had a significant focus on faculty and research. He said he wanted Northeastern to become a national leader in a variety of fields, and some fields of research might have to be abandoned or scaled back in order to support and focus growth.

Director also said replacing professors who leave the university must be a priority, but he acknowledged that hiring new faculty is difficult, especially in the current financial climate.

He said the recent economic downturn has had an impact on the university’s endowment, and said the university must put considerable thought into how hires will benefit the university, like through research or interdisciplinary work.

After Director’s remarks and the question and answer period, the Senate voted on and approved two motions: one approving a new graduate program in urban and regional policy and one limiting admission to the doctor of pharmacy program to current students.

The urban and regional policy master’s degree program “is primarily oriented in training the next generation of analysts and researchers who will be focused on urban policies and issues,” said Christopher Bosso, associate dean of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy. The reason to limit admission to the pharmacy program, said Jack Reynolds, dean of the School of Pharmacy, was because the program has more than a 90 percent retention rate, so there was not room for a student from outside the university to join the program.

“It won’t change our enrollments in any way, and it won’t affect our faculty or our needs,” Reynolds said.