Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen to retire

Eight years after Wendy Wintersteen became Iowa State University’s first female president in 2017, the esteemed entomologist announced plans Friday to retire in early 2026.

“I have asked the Iowa Board of Regents to begin a search for the next president of this great university,” Wintersteen, 68, said in a letter to the campus. “My hope is that the search process will begin very soon, and the new president will assume the role in January of 2026, whereupon I will retire.”

Wintersteen didn’t submit her retirement plans in writing to the board, regents spokesman Josh Lehman told The Gazette. But the board called a virtual meeting for Monday to officially accept her retirement “upon the employment of a successor president or an alternative mutually agreeable date.”

At the meeting, the board will authorize Executive Director Mark Braun to enter into an agreement with a firm to consult on a search for ISU’s next president; create a search committee; and develop a process and timeline for the search. Braun will report back on the status of the search during the board’s June meeting.

The regents chose Wintersteen in October 2017 to serve as the campus’ 16th president after a national search brought to the Ames campus finalists including Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and University of Georgia Provost Pamela Whitten.

Wintersteen’s selection continued her decades of service at ISU, where 46 years ago she began her career as one of the first female ISU Extension associates in integrated pest management.

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She completed her doctorate in entomology at ISU and advanced to entomology professor — eventually serving nearly 12 years as the inaugural endowed dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station.

She was the only internal finalist in 2017 to replace outgoing ISU President Steven Leath, who had been hired to lead Auburn University in Alabama.

“Being an internal candidate often is seen as not the best approach,” she told The Gazette at the time. “But I felt I brought an understanding of Iowa State that would be critically important at this time in Iowa State's history. I bring an understanding of the culture of Iowa. I know leaders in Iowa. … It gives me a special set of circumstances to hit the ground running.”

Compensation

Upon her hire, Wintersteen landed a contract giving her stepped salary increases in each of her first three years — bringing her salary in line with then-University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld.

Wintersteen last summer received a $60,000 pay raise — upping her base annual salary to $710,000, after the regents in 2023 kept her salary flat. The board in 2024 didn’t touch Wintersteen’s deferred compensation agreement after giving her a new plan in 2023.

That year, Wintersteen received a $733,333 deferred compensation payout from her previous agreement — bringing her total salary, deferred compensation and benefits for fiscal 2023 to $1.5 million.

Wintersteen got another $80,000 payout last summer, with her new deferred compensation plan making annual contributions of $415,000 through Dec. 31, 2025 — amounting to $1.04 million.

The contributions, per the agreement, are payable only if Wintersteen remains employed through the end of this year.

Although her deferred compensation agreement ends in 2025, her current employment contract goes through June 30, 2026.

COVID, BLM, anti-DEI

“I have had the good fortune of serving Iowa State University for 46 years, with the last eight as president,” she said in her retirement letter. “It’s been a fascinating journey.”

When Wintersteen took over in fall 2017, the campus was sitting just below its all-time enrollment high of 36,348 the year before and was handily the largest public university in Iowa.

In the years since, ISU — like Iowa’s other two public universities — has seen enrollment slide, aggravated by the pandemic in 2020 that forced massive disruptions and unprecedented changes.

Wintersteen, alongside her presidential peers, had to grapple with questions of whether and how to continue offering instruction in the immediate pandemic throes — taking a remote approach that trickled down into every aspect of campus operations.

She led the campus through decisions on masks, vaccines, housing, in-person classes, faculty flexibility and the budget. She unveiled retirement incentives and pay freezes and projected losses — cutting her own pay 10 percent, amounting to $59,000 off a $590,000 salary.

Later that summer, Wintersteen joined other campuses in condemning the killing of George Floyd — as protests erupted across the country and the “Black Lives Matter” movement swelled.

“There is no justification for racism and brutality — ever — and especially not within the ranks of our public servants,” she wrote in a campus message that since has been pulled from the ISU website in response to anti-diversity, equity and inclusion directives.

“My leadership team and I condemn racism, white supremacy, antisemitism and xenophobia,” she wrote, describing actions her administration was taking — actions she’s has to reverse years later in response to Republican outcry over DEI spending and “waste.”

Last year, in response to regent and lawmaker directives, Wintersteen closed her university’s central DEI office — eliminating five positions and reallocating about $789,000 to other priorities.

One lawmaker at that time accused her of criticizing the Legislature’ actions over DEI during an ISU Alumni Association meeting.

“I do not appreciate it — nor did certain members of the board of directors,” Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, emailed the regents about Wintersteen. “If President Wintersteen is interested in setting public policy for the state, then she should run for the Legislature.”

With the Legislative session just wrapped for this year, none of the three public universities received any increase in general education appropriations for the 2026 budget year — and landing just a fraction of the special purpose hikes each campus had requested.

Highlights

Underscoring “new heights of research and teaching excellence” ISU reached during Wintersteen’s tenure, campus officials referenced achievements in innovation, student outcomes and fundraising.

For innovation, they noted that ISU in 2024 ranked 57th across universities worldwide for its 60 U.S. patents; over the past eight years attracted more than $4.2 billion in external funding, setting three consecutive records for research funding; and in 2024 received a “model university accelerator award” from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

For student outcomes, they pointed out that ISU’s first-year student retention rate under Wintersteen climbed to nearly 88 percent — 10.5 points above the national average for four-year public institutions; that the average time to degree under her leadership dropped from 4.4 years to 4.1 years — a historic low; and that over 44 percent of ISU students graduate without debt, with the portion who do take on loans dropping from 59 to 56 percent.

And under fundraising, they said that in Wintersteen’s first four years, the campus foundation exceed a $1.1 billion fundraising goal by reaching $1.5 billion, thanks to gifts and commitments from 96,000 people; that $500 million of that total supported students, including 56,000 scholarships; and that the campaign created 148 named faculty positions.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com