After four years of leading the WSU-Spokane campus, Chancellor Lisa Brown will be stepping down, with the possibility of returning to her former 20-year career in politics.

Brown helped fund the Nursing Building in 2009, and allowed WSU to relocate the College of Pharmacy to Spokane with the funding of the Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Building in 2013.

Yesterday, Brown said she will leave WSU in August. Daryll DeWald, the current dean of the WSU College of Arts and Sciences, will assume the position on Sept. 1.

The College of Arts and Sciences spans all five of WSU’s campuses and the online Global Campus and accounts for a significant portion of the university’s research activity. Before joining WSU, he led the Department of Biology at Utah State for 15 years.

When Brown was a 3rd district state legislator, mostly made up of Spokane, she led health-related initiatives, such as writing a bill to create the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, which supports health care-related research in Washington. In 2005, Brown was the first woman in state history to be elected as the Senate majority leader.

When Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) was expected to be tapped to serve as Interior secretary under President Donald Trump in December, Brown said she would consider running for McMorris Rodgers’s seat.