New president to be named today

Adam W. Herbert, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, will be named IU's first black president, culminating an extensive eight-month search, according to an IU source.\nThe IU board of trustees will announce Herbert's appointment at 10 a.m. today in the Musical Arts Center. Herbert visited the campus May 22, said Will Thompson, a desk clerk at the Grant Street Inn, where Herbert stayed while in Bloomington.\nThe search committee was formed in November after former President Myles Brand left IU to head the NCAA. Gerald Bepko has served as interim president since Nov. 1. \nThe Atlanta-based firm of Baker, Parker and Associates served as lead consultant in the nationwide search. \nCurrently executive director of the Florida Center for Public Policy and Leadership, Herbert comes to Indiana well-versed in the socio-economic construction of public institutions, after spending over two decades with the State University System of Florida and acting as its sixth chancellor from Jan. 20, 1998 to March 2, 2001, when Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dismantled it. Prior to that appointment, he served as president of the University of North Florida for 10 years and was a member of the NCAA Executive Board. \nHis indoctrination into state systems, however, far precluded his experience in Florida. A graduate of the University of Southern California -- part of the California statewide public university system and indeed a model for subsequent state and regional campuses -- Herbert holds an undergraduate degree in political science and a Master of Public Administration from USC. He went on to earn his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971. \nHerbert also served as chairman of the urban affairs program and associate professor of urban affairs at Virginia Tech in 1972. Two years later, he accepted a White House fellowship to act as special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and served thereafter under the U.S. Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development. \nOthers whose names were rumored as possible candidates throughout the search process included James Morris, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program and former president of the board; Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education; and Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.\nDan Langan, press secretary in Paige's Washington, D.C. offices, deflected initial inquiries concerning Paige's possible appointment to the IU position.\n"Secretary Paige plans to continue serving as Secretary of Education as long as the president wants him to serve," Langan said. \nTom Luljak, vice chancellor for university relations and communications at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, said Zimpher has no intentions of leaving Wisconsin and will be speaking all week on the Milwaukee campus at Board of Regents meetings. \n"She has said previously that indeed she learned she had been nominated for this position, and while she was flattered by the nomination, she is very much committed to UW-Milwaukee," Luljak said. \nRina Manzo, Morris' secretary at the U.N. World Food Program, said Morris asked her to convey that there was "absolutely no truth to the rumor" that he could be named president in today's meeting. \nCampus editor Doug Auer contributed to this story.