Charles Walcott, professor of neurobiology and behavior, has been appointed to a two-year term as director of the Cornell University Division of Biological Sciences.

A past director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Walcott replaces Peter Bruns, the professor of genetics who headed the intercollege Division of Biological Sciences for 10 years.

In announcing the appointment, effective Jan. 1, 1998, Cornell Provost Don M. Randel cited the quality of teaching and research initiatives developed in the Division of Biological Sciences during Bruns' tenure and said, "The number of fresh ideas coming from him in this period, on a very broad range of subjects, has been both remarkable and inspiring. I have particularly admired his insistence that there be no compromise in either the most elementary teaching or the most advanced research."

Walcott can be expected to provide "continuous vigorous leadership," Provost Randel said. "Professor Walcott is ideally suited to lead the division."

The Cornell Division of Biological Sciences includes eight academic departments, called sections, as well as the Shoals Marine Laboratory, and it is staffed by more than 130 faculty members from three colleges: Arts and Sciences, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine. In addition to master's degree and doctoral graduate students in eight fields, the division enrolls some 1,700 undergraduate biology majors and offers more than 260 courses.

Bruns will resume teaching and research in the area of developmental genetics. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1969.

Walcott earned a Ph.D. in zoology at Cornell in 1959 and taught at Harvard and Tufts universities and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before returning as the director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in 1981. He stepped down as the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director of the Laboratory in 1995, and he resumed teaching and research in the areas of territorial vocalizations of birds and the navigational orientation of animals.