First ISU presidential hopeful pledges transparency

AMES - In his introduction to the university he could potentially lead in a few months, Sonny Ramaswamy emphasized transparency - a point of criticism for ISU's most recent leader.

Ramaswamy, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, pledged transparency to the crowd of about 250 people who turned out to meet him at ISU's Memorial Union on Monday.

Ramaswamy, 65, is the first of four presidential finalists to visit Iowa State this week as the Iowa Board of Regents prepares to choose the university's 16th president.

Ramaswamy, who met with students and staff before the hourlong public forum, said for ISU to keep its promises and advance, it will have to be open and accessible in its decision-making.

'We've got to make sure we are completely transparent in everything that we do,” he told the audience. 'I heard this many times today, that a lot of the conversations, a lot of the challenges we've got, are the consequence of the lack of transparency in the things that we end up doing.”

ISU's former president Steven Leath faced scrutiny after new reports revealed he flew university aircraft for personal use and didn't publicly disclose he had damaged one of the planes on a hard landing in 2014. After meeting with the Board of Regents, Leath apologized and reimbursed the university.

Ramaswamy said there is an 'aura” around Beardshear Hall, the main administration building on campus, and that decisions have to be made 'in concert with each other,” collaboratively.

'Without that, we're not going to make a whole lot of progress to achieve that next level,” he said.

He said that also means ISU's decision-makers need to hold each other accountable. He said the university needs to work toward creating an equitable environment for everyone and sticking to its land-grant university mission.

During the question-and-answer session of the forum, Ramaswamy was asked about how he would deal with a controversial speaker coming to campus, someone, perhaps, that a large part of the campus community might not want to hear from.

He lamented the current divisiveness in the political arena but said ISU shouldn't turn away a speaker just because they might say something not everyone likes. The school, however, should set some ground rules - no violence, for instance, that, if violated, would end the event, Ramaswamy said.

That point was welcomed to by Bradlee Fair, who's in her third year at ISU. She was impressed Ramaswamy brought the U.S. Supreme Court into his argument for the 'rules of engagement” for those speakers.

'I was really glad that he sounded like he has a game plan in mind and one with legal backing,” she said.

Fair was also glad Ramaswamy spoke about student achievement but also talked about students' mental health. He mentioned the opioid epidemic across the United States, calling it 'mind-boggling” and that it was a consequence of the economic downturn. ISU, he said, has a responsibility to address that.

Responding to a question from Andrew Allen, the president of Youth and Shelter Services in Ames, Ramaswamy said Iowa State 'must absolutely commit” to providing help to students who've struggled with drug and alcohol use.

A student who works in an ISU residence halls said there had been 'several” suicide attempts over the past week. She asked what Ramaswamy and ISU should do to help students who are struggling.

Ramaswamy urged people to pay attention to their friends' or students' behaviors to maybe catch warning signs. Making resources available for the campus health center should be another focus, he said.

'We've really got to be paying attention to that,” he said. 'If we don't pay attention to that, we'll end up not catching those symptoms and those signs in those young people.”

After the forum, Ramaswamy said he wasn't surprised by any of the questions he fielded. He ignored the stage behind him and strolled back and forth on the floor, occasionally calling out to the students and staff he'd met earlier in the day. He began his remarks with an easy crowd pleaser - lauding the Iowa State football team's massive upset over Oklahoma this past weekend.

He admitted several times that his ISU knowledge was limited, but he was still impressive to some in the audience.

'It just seems like he was all-encompassing with his answers of the different facets of the university,” said Barbara Atkins, an ISU graduate.

Ramaswamy's six-year term at the USDA will end in the spring of 2018, and he said if the regents pick him on Oct. 23, he won't hesitate to accept what he calls his dream job.

'I'd do it,” he said. 'There's no ifs or buts about it.”

Ramaswamy, in his federal post, manages a budget of about $1.6 billion and 400 workers.

He also oversees the distribution of millions of dollars in research grants to the country's 50-plus land-grant universities and helps support the institutions' agricultural education and Extension Service programs.

Before his appointment to the federal post, Ramaswamy was dean of Oregon State University's College of Agricultural Sciences and director of the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station.

He has been an administrator and professor at several universities, including Purdue, Kansas and Kansas State.