Iowa State’s third presidential finalist has deep agricultural engineering background

An executive vice president and provost at the University of Central Florida with a strong academic and experiential background in agricultural engineering is the third finalist to become Iowa State University's next president.

Dale Whittaker will visit the Ames campus Wednesday to meet with administrators, faculty, staff, and students as part of the search to replace former ISU President Steven Leath. Two other finalists have been named before him.

Sonny Ramaswamy, serving a six-year term as director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, was first to visit campus and participate in a public forum Monday. Pamela Whitten, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Georgia Athens, is in town today and will participate in a public forum at 4 p.m.

The name of the fourth and final candidate is expected Wednesday, as he or she will visit campus Thursday. The Board of Regents is expected to conduct final interviews with the four top prospects Oct. 23, after first reviewing public feedback and hearing thoughts from the 21-member search committee.

The board is expected to decide that same day on a new ISU president.

Whittaker's background plays to the strengths of Iowa State, which has the top-ranked undergraduate agricultural engineering program in the nation. He's earned bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in that field from Texas A&M University and Purdue University, respectively.

He landed professorships in agricultural engineering at those schools, also serving 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.

He became dean and director of academic programs in the College of Agriculture at Purdue University in 2002 and advanced into a vice provost role in 2010 before moving to Central Florida to become provost and executive vice president in 2014.

When he was named to that post, UFC President John C. Hitt in a news release praised his 'tremendous range and depth of experience in large and excellent universities.”

'He is a professional who will help us become better in all areas of our operation and help us develop excellent educational programs,” Hitt said at the time, according to the release.

All three of the Iowa State finalists thus far have Purdue connections, as Ramaswamy served as a director and associate dean there from 2006 to 2009, and Whitten was a professor there from 2005 to 2006 - meaning all three could have been there at the same time.

According to Whittaker's Central Florida bio, since his arrival at UCF three years ago he's overseen a reorganization of academic affairs, the hiring of 200 new faculty members, and the development of a downtown campus and an interdisciplinary faculty cluster initiative aimed at promoting 'innovating scholarship across the university.”

His public forum, like the others, will begin at 4 p.m. in Iowa State's Memorial Union and will be live streamed on the Iowa State search website.