2 likely finalists named for IU presidency

The IU board of trustees will likely select the University's next president within a month, said Ken Gros Louis, IU vice president and chancellor -- citing faculty discontent as a reason for the hastened decision.\nThroughout the search process, Sue Talbot, IU trustee and chair of the Presidential Search Committee, has said a decision about the University's next leader would be reached by summer. But Gros Louis said he expected the search to conclude prior to the University's spring break, which begins March 12. \n"If (the trustees) feel the mounting pressure from the faculty, they might want to move up the time frame just so that the irritation doesn't grow," he said. \nThe prediction comes as two names surfaced in an e-mail that IU chemistry professor Theodore Widlanski sent to some faculty members last week. The e-mail predicted that Interim Provost Michael McRobbie and Dr. Ora Pescovitz, executive associate dean for research affairs at the IU School of Medicine, are likely two of the search's final candidates. \n"These are the names most of us already know," Widlanski said in his e-mail to faculty members. "Any notion that the process must continue to be done confidentially is surely counterproductive at this point."\nIn his e-mail, Widlanski would not specifically name his sources for calling McRobbie and Pescovitz likely finalists and would not say in a telephone interview Monday whether he had personally spoken with either people. \n"I am not going to comment on conversations I may have had with them," he said.\nIn a call to Pescovitz at home Monday night, she refused to either confirm or deny that she was a final candidate for the position, but said she was under instruction from Talbot not to discuss the search. \n"I do think the process will have to become public," Pescovitz said. "You are going to hear something sometime soon."\nBut rumors that McRobbie is a front-runner for the University's top position surfaced long before Widlanski's e-mail. One top University administrator as well as several IU professors also said McRobbie was the trustees' favorite candidate, even though no one directly involved with the selection would confirm reports.\nIf the rumors are false and McRobbie in fact is not chosen for the presidency, Gros Louis said a number of people within the University believe that McRobbie will leave IU if he is not selected as president. \n"He could be a good candidate for president at Purdue or Ohio State," Gros Louis said. \nAlong with being IU School of Medicine's dean of research, Pescovitz also currently serves as the president and chief executive officer of Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. \nDespite the widespread speculation that Pescovitz is a finalist, she would not confirm her status as a candidate.\n"I've been instructed to refer all inquiries about the IU presidential search process to trustee Sue Talbot," Pescovitz said in an e-mail.\nTalbot could not be reached at home Monday night after numerous attempts. \nWith definite Big Ten ties, Pescovitz graduated from medical school at Northwestern University and completed her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, according to an IU Cancer Center Web site. She also participated in a fellowship at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Md., according to the same Web site. \nAnd as the prominence of women university presidents has garnered particular attention lately -- especially with the recent selection of Harvard University's first woman president -- the question becomes: Could Pescovitz receive particular consideration because she is a woman?\nNot so, said Gros Louis, because he believed the trustees' decision would be based solely on the merit of the candidate.\n"I think these trustees and the trustees before them were all really looking for the right fit," he said.