Iowa State University search committee to evaluate 78 applicants for president

AMES — A 12-member search committee charged with identifying Iowa State University’s next president is scheduled to meet next week to discuss in closed session the 78 prospects who applied.

The Board of Regents did not provide additional details about the more than six dozen applicants who filed their paperwork by the Sept. 19 deadline — including any breakdown by gender or experience in academia.

The committee will open its Oct. 6 meeting on the ISU campus with a brief rundown of the closed session process before taking the meeting offline. The committee then will spend an anticipated four hours evaluating the applicants before bringing the meeting into open session to discuss next steps.

A tentative timeline released earlier this year has the committee choosing semifinalists at the Oct. 6 meeting and developing questions they’ll ask them during semifinalist interviews — tentatively planned for Oct. 20.

The committee on Oct. 20 is scheduled to identify three to four finalists to bring to the ISU campus in early November.

The Board of Regents is scheduled to meet for a regular meeting in Ames on Nov. 11-13 — but also will at that time hear from the search committee, interview finalists in closed session, and then choose a president-elect.

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That person will succeed Wendy Wintersteen, who announced in May plans to retire in January 2026 after eight years at the helm of the nearly 168-year-old institution.

When Wintersteen began her tenure in late 2017 following a national search that put her up against University of Georgia Provost Pamela Whitten and Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Wintersteen became the university’s first female president.

At 68, Wintersteen said she’s retiring after 46 years with the campus — having started her Cyclone journey as one of the first female ISU Extension associates in integrated pest management before advancing to become inaugural endowed dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station.

This is a developing story. Check back for more details.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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