Iowa State presidential finalist Dale Whittaker drops out

University of Central Florida Provost and Executive Vice President Dale Whittaker - who last week told the Iowa State University community he wants to serve as its president, in part, because of its promising position to address global problems - has dropped out of contention.

Whittaker withdrew from the presidential search Thursday - just four days before the Board of Regents is scheduled to conduct final interviews with the candidates and make a selection Monday. In a statement, Whittaker, 56, called the decision 'difficult” because ISU 'is an excellent institution that values student success and produces impactful research.”

'I appreciate how warmly Mary and I were welcomed to campus,” he said in the statement. 'At this time, I'm committed to keeping our momentum moving forward at the University of Central Florida.”

His departure from contention leaves three finalists for the post, which former ISU President Steven Leath vacated in May to take over at Auburn University in Alabama.

The remaining finalists include Sonny Ramaswamy, who is serving a six-year term as director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture; Pamela Whitten, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Georgia Athens; and the only internal candidate - Wendy Wintersteen, dean of the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of its Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station.

This is the third presidential search the Board of Regents has conducted in two years. It selected former IBM businessman Bruce Harreld as University of Iowa president in fall 2015 and Montana State University Billings Chancellor Mark Nook as University of Northern Iowa president in December 2016.

None of the finalists for the UI search dropped out, and one of four finalists advanced for the UNI job dropped out of consideration before his or her name was made public.

The board in the past has debated whether to make public names of finalists, weighing its desire for transparency with concerns that top candidates won't apply or want to participate if doing so could threaten their current employment.

The board, in its most recent searches, released names of its finalists just 24 hours before each came to campus to meet with faculty, staff, students, and administrators and participate in public forums.

During Whittaker's public forum last week, he tied Iowa State's standing as a national leader in agricultural and engineering research to his personal lifelong mission to 'end hunger and heal the Earth through knowledge.”

'Iowa State will be a leader to end hunger and create a future that can be sustained,” Whittaker said during his forum. 'When you want to aspire to a future, you have to build on your strengths, and this is an institution that is better positioned than any institution in the world … to lead the addressing of hunger.”

Whittaker said he also wanted to lead Iowa State toward expanding and increasing its impact locally and across the state by making it the best undergraduate experience in the Association of American Universities and using it to unleash the potential of every Iowan.

He vowed to be a strong advocate for additional resources to make that goal reality.

'I think it's important for this president, for your next president, to be a voice for higher education, the value of higher education, not only to people but to the economy,” he said.

Whittaker's background aligns with the strengths of Iowa State, which boasts the top-ranked undergraduate agricultural engineering program in the country. He earned bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in that field from Texas A&M University and Pursue University, respectively.

He held professorships in agricultural engineering at those schools and also served as director of the Center for Food Processing and associate head of research and graduate education in the Department of Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M.

Before moving to Central Florida to become provost and executive vice president in 2014, Whittaker was dean and director of academic programs in the College of Agriculture at Purdue University and then vice provost there.

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