Finalists for Iowa State president's job will be on campus Oct. 9-12

The four people interviewing to become Iowa State University's 16th president will visit the Ames campus next week.

The candidates, whose identities are being kept secret until a day before their visit, will each take part in a public forum on the afternoon of their visit.

Originally, finalist interviews were slated to begin on Thursday. However, scheduling conflicts emerged and the visits are now scheduled Monday through Oct. 12.

The four finalists were among seven people interviewed by a 21-member search committee last week in closed-door meetings at the Hilton Minneapolis/Bloomington Hotel, located 200 miles north of ISU’s campus.

Sixty-four people — 59 were men and five women — applied for the ISU president's job, previously held by Steven Leath, who resigned last spring after he was tapped for the top position at Alabama’s Auburn University.

Benjamin Allen, a former ISU provost and past president of the University of Northern Iowa, has been ISU’s interim president since Leath’s departure.

ISU is Iowa’s largest public university with more than 36,300 students. 

Finalists for the ISU president's job will answer questions from students, faculty and staff, alumni and others during one-hour public forums. Specifics of the forum schedules include: 

• 4 p.m., Oct. 9,  in Memorial Union's Sun Room 
• 4 p.m., Oct. 10 in Memorial Union's Durham Great Hall
• 4 p.m., Oct. 11, Memorial Union's Sun Room
• 4 p.m., Oct. 12, in Memorial Union's Durham Great Hall

Live video streaming of each public forum will be available on the ISU Presidential Search Website at www.presidentsearch.iastate.edu.

The ISU presidential search committee will meet with the Iowa Board of Regents on Oct. 23 to discuss the finalists. Afterwards the regents will interview the candidates and likely name one of them ISU’s president.