Bruce Rastetter re-elected as Board of Regents president

Businessman Bruce Rastetter will serve out the remainder of his six-year term on the Board of Regents as its president after his colleagues on Thursday unanimously agreed to re-elect him to the leadership role.

Regents President Pro Tem Katie Mulholland also won unanimous approval to continue in that role. No one else on the nine-member board was nominated for president or president pro tem, and no discussion accompanied the quick vote to keep Rastetter and Mulholland at the helm.

Some members of the University of Iowa community - including faculty, staff, and students - have called for Rastetter to resign from the board over, among other things, concerns with the search that landed new UI President Bruce Harreld and a proposal to re-allocate state resources based on performance metrics.

Upon learning that regents would be re-electing a leader at the board's meeting in Council Bluffs on Thursday, several UI community members last week spoke at a pre-recorded public hearing on campus against Rastetter's re-election.

'I don't know the regents - this is not a personal issue for me,” said Landon Storrs, UI history professor and director of undergraduate studies. 'But I do believe, in the short time I have been at Iowa, that he unfortunately has been most strongly associated with two things that have very much damaged the university, in terms of its reputation and also damaged the relationship of the university to the Board of Regents.”

The Board of Regents includes nine members, who are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate to serve staggered six-year terms. The board elects a president and president pro-tem for two-year terms. Both Rasetetter and Mulholland are serving terms set to expire in April 2017. If they are no longer on the board after that time, the board again will elect leaders to replace them.

When asked Thursday about concerns raised with his leadership, Rastetter pointed to positive feedback he has received from faculty and college deans about Harreld and his work so far with the campus community - specifically around a broader and more inclusive budgeting process.

'We are comfortable, and they are, with the selection we made,” Rastetter said. 'That openness and inclusiveness that Harreld is doing today is reflective of the board's view that that would happen.”

Although many UI faculty and staff voiced outrage around the search process that landed Harreld, along with his lack of administrative academic experience, Rastetter said he's hearing support for the new president's leadership to date.

'And I believe we are going to continue to have a positive outcome,” Rastetter said.