Iowa State University presidential search committee seeks ‘broad’ net of applicants

AMES — A 12-member committee charged with helping find Iowa State University’s next president aims to cast a wide applicant net, leaning toward using the word “preferred” instead of “required” for candidate attributes like a terminal degree or higher ed experience.

“I'd like to keep our net as broad as possible and say we err on the side of receiving more applications than we were expecting,” committee member and ISU biomedical professor Tim Day said during the group’s first meeting Tuesday on the ISU campus. “Working through those applications is a way better outcome than having too shallow of a pool.”

The committee also talked through preferred leadership attributes of Iowa State’s next president — like political acumen, an ability to work across the aisle, a strategic vision, and commitment to innovate — along with some of the challenges they might face.

The discussion touched on Iowa State’s decision, in 2022, to leave the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only member group of North America’s most elite comprehensive research universities. The university said it left because the indicators used by AAU to rank its members had begun to favor institutions with medical schools.

“The AAU exit three years ago was something that we were saddened about,” said Roger Underwood, search committee member and ISU alum and donor who served on the ISU Foundation board of directors. “But I guess we didn't control that as much as AAU did by the rules they wrote that basically pushed us out. But is the AAU disengagement going to be a negative in some candidates’ minds?”

“No,” said Rodrick McDavis — managing principal and CEO of AGB Search, hired to assist Iowa State in finding outgoing President Wendy Wintersteen’s successor — framing it as an opportunity.

“This is a great opportunity for me to come and work with the faculty, to work with the deans, to work with the staff and students, etc., to help lift us to the level where we might get invited to rejoin the AAU,” McDavis said of what an applicant might say. “So I think that's a wonderful quality to put in there. And that's going to attract that caliber of person who sees that as something that he or she will be will be able to help with.”

‘50-plus candidates, easily’

Speaking to the breadth of applicants the search committee aspires to attract, McDavis said AGB advises using the term “preferred” rather than “required” for attributes like higher education experience and doctorate degree.

“I think with ‘preferred,’ you're going to have a great quality in your pool,” he said. “You’re going to attract, I would say, 50-plus candidates, easily.”

Praising Iowa State as a “preferred institution for all right reasons,” McDavis called this a “very attractive opportunity.”

“You have people around the country that wait for these kinds of opportunities,” he said. “One of the reasons that we tend to say preferred is that not only do you attract folks that we would consider to be your traditional applicants — and those would be people from higher ed — but you may find that there are a few other folks out there that you might attract.”

The University of Iowa — before hiring current UI President Barbara Wilson in 2021 — went the non-traditional route in 2015 with its hire of Bruce Harreld, a former IBM executive with an MBA, rather than a doctorate.

McDavis on Tuesday pointed to Ted Carter — a U.S. Navy admiral who, despite holding only a bachelor’s degree, was hired to lead the University of Nebraska system in 2020 and currently is president of The Ohio State University.

“So you never know sometimes what you’ll find out there in terms of the quality of a person, regardless of the degree,” he said, promising plenty of traditional candidates will apply as well.

“Be careful what you wish for,” McDavis added, promising to share the open position “very, very broadly — all across the world.”

“We just did a search recently for another client where they were hoping to get, you know, 30 to 40 applications,” he said. “They got over 100. So the committee was excited about that until they had to read over 100.”

Political acumen

Other attributes the committee identified as ideal in a next president include understanding of, if not experience with, land-grant universities; strength in collaborating across campus and with business and industry partners; and strategic planning skills.

They talked about current and future federal funding cuts and the need to navigate that. And, along those lines, committee members stressed the changing higher education landscape and political pressures — which McDavis affirmed as something other universities also are looking for in a new president.

“Someone who has political acumen,” he said. “You have to deal with your state legislature, you have to deal with the governor, you have to deal with folks in Washington. So someone who has some sensitivity and understanding of how you work with elected folks on both sides of the aisle.”

It’s not about taking a political position, according to committee members.

“Our board policy is that our university presidents are not out there making political statements,” committee member and regent Robert Cramer said. “We don't want to attract that person who really wants to grandstand or make political statements. We want to have a team player.”

Committee charge

In issuing the Board of Regents’ charge to the committee Tuesday, President Sherry Bates said the group will present an unranked list of three to five candidates and work to advance those finalists to the board.

“After the candidates’ campus visits have been completed, the committee will meet with the Board of Regents to review its work and provide comments regarding the strengths of each of the finalists they have recommended to the board prior to the board’s final candidate interviews,” she said.

Although not mentioned in the charge, a new law passed last year allows the Board of Regents to use a presidential search committee but “only members of the board shall serve as voting members of a presidential selection committee.”

The ISU committee has four regents, including co-chair JC Risewick, Greta Rouse, Kurt Tjaden, and Cramer.

Download: Tentative Timeline (ISU 2025).pdf

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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