Iowa State agricultural dean is finalist for university's president's job

Kathy A. Bolten
The Des Moines Register

Iowa State agricultural dean Dr. Wendy Wintersteen is a finalist for ISU's president's job.

The dean of Iowa State University’s agriculture college for the past 11 years is the fourth finalist for the top job at the Ames institution.

“To many people, she is dean of the ag college,” said Iowa’s agriculture secretary Bill Northey of Wendy Wintersteen. “But to many, many more, she’s just ‘Wendy.’”

Wintersteen, 61, has led ISU's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences since 2006. She is one of four people vying to become Iowa State’s 16th president; if selected, she would become the university’s first female president.

The other candidates for the post are:

Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture;

Pamela Whitten, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Georgia in Athens; and

Dale Whittaker, provost and executive vice president at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Those three finalists visited the Ames campus this week and participated in public forums.

Wintersteen, who has worked at Iowa State for more than 35 years, will take part in a daylong schedule of interviews Thursday including a forum at 4 p.m. in Memorial Union where the public will have an opportunity to ask her questions.

Wintersteen began working at ISU shortly after her graduation in 1978 from Kansas State University, where she studied crop protection. Her first job with the university was as an ISU extension associate in the area of integrated pest management.

She became an assistant entomology professor in 1988, the same year she received her doctorate degree from Iowa State.

The only time Wintersteen spent away from ISU was between 1989 and 1990 when she was acting National Pesticide Education Program leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Extension Service.

“She may have spent most of her time at Iowa State, but she’s also been very active at learning what is happening in other places and if she sees something she likes, implementing at” ISU, Northey said.

Wintersteen oversees an agriculture college that has a $172 million budget and includes 317 faculty, 484 staff and 5,509 students, according to her resume.

Undergraduate enrollment in the agriculture college has grown by 90 percent during Wintersteen’s tenure as dean, according to her resume. In addition, the college’s four-year graduation rate is 63 percent and career placement rate, 98 percent.

“She’s managed the growth of the college very well,” Northey said. “I can’t even imagine all of the challenges that come with growth like that ... But as I talk to students, they are very, very satisfied with their experience at the college.”

Wintersteen became the agriculture college's first endowed dean through a $3 million donation to the program. In conjunction with the Iowa State University Foundation, more than $247 million has been raised for students, faculty and staff in the agriculture college, she wrote in her resume. The money has been used to help pay for endowed chairs and professorships, scholarships for students and new programs and facilities.

In September, for instance, it was announced that Kent Corp., Iowa Corn Promotion Board, and Sukup Manufacturing Co. were providing $14 million toward the development of a feed mill and grain science complex on 10 acres of ISU land in Ames. Classes would be held at the proposed $21.2 million facility, where research on the dietary requirement of animals would also occur.

“A lot of us in the industry are very excited about that project,” said Steve Sukup, chief financial officer for the Sheffield-based family-owned manufacturer of grain bins and dryers and other products. The feed mill and grain science complex “will set the university apart from others.”

Sukup said he’s not surprised Wintersteen is among the finalists for the ISU president’s job. “She is very dedicated to the university ... It’s always good in any organization to feel like you have an individual who can step into a leadership role like that.”

Craig Floss, chief executive officer for the Iowa Corn Growers Association, has known Wintersteen for nearly 20 years. He is a member of the agriculture college’s executive council and said he’s been impressed with how Wintersteen works with other university department leaders.

“She does a really nice job of bridging gaps between groups,” he said.  

Wintersteen, who grew up in Kansas, got into the agricultural field because her parents and grandparents were farmers, she told the Iowa State Daily in a 2014 profile. 

“When I was a child, we moved into Hutchinson, Kansas, so that’s where I spent most of my childhood,” Wintersteen told the campus newspaper. “We’d always go back to the farm and I just knew I wanted to be involved in agriculture because of that connection to my parents’ and grandparents’ enterprise.”

The ISU president’s job opened in spring after Steven Leath resigned to take the helm of Alabama’s Auburn University.

More than 60 people applied for the position and a search committee, in September, interviewed seven semifinalists. The committee asked four of those people to visit the ISU campus.

The Iowa Board of Regents is scheduled to meet Oct. 23 to interview the four finalists and select ISU’s new president.

Wendy Wintersteen

AGE: 61

EDUCATION: Received bachelor’s degree in crop protection from Kansas State University (1978); doctorate degree in entomology from Iowa State University (1988).

RECENT ADMINISTRATION EXPERIENCE: Since 2006, has been dean of Iowa State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; senior associate dean of the college and associate director of Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station (2002-05); director of extension to Agriculture and Natural Resources at Iowa State (1997-2000).

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE: Professor in Iowa State’s entomology department since 1996.

FAMILY: Husband, Robert.