Finding Herman B Wells

After long months of secretly searching for candidates, it appears the IU trustees may soon reach the end of their quest to find IU’s new president. \nThough the chairwoman of the Presidential Search Committee, IU trustee Sue Talbot, has maintained that the new president would be named by this summer, IU Chancellor Ken Gros Louis believes the decision will be announced before the start of the University’s spring break, March 12. \nIf the trustees are indeed drawing the search process to a close, we think it is a relief, given the high amount of speculation, student discontent over the lack of involvement and the faculty discontent that Gros Louis cited as a reason for quickening of the decision. \nIU chemistry professor Theodore Widlanski sent an e-mail to several faculty members last week naming IU Interim Provost Michael McRobbie and Executive Associate Dean for Research Affairs at the IU School of Medicine Ora Pescovitz as two of the Presidential Search Committee’s likely final candidates. \nThis can be taken as good news for several reasons. Both of the candidates are extremely well-qualified for the position. Michael McRobbie is not only the interim provost at IU, but he’s vice president for Information Technology and CIO, vice president for research and a professor of informatics, computer science and philosophy. He’s a professor of computer technology in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis. In addition, he is a member of many other national and international scientific, industrial and governmental boards and committees.\nPescovitz oversees the IU School of Medicine’s research program, one which brings in over $200 million a year in the form of grants and contracts. She also supervises the Indiana Genomics Initiative, which, according to her biography, is funded by $155 million in grants from the Lilly Endowment. The Genomics Initiative has created the research base for the BioCrossroads program and Indiana’s life sciences economic initiatives. She’s also an Edwin Letzer Professor of Pediatrics and professor of cellular and integrative physiology at the IU School of Medicine. She was appointed president and chief executive officer of Riley Hospital for Children in 2004 and has served as the director of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology at the School of Medicine and Riley Hospital since 1990. \nBoth candidates also have strong ties to IU, as opposed to candidates from different universities, who may not have the same ties to the IU community. \nThe announcement of IU’s next president will also bring to rest a chapter of IU history that has been full of controversy. Many have been calling for the search to go public at this point, and the faculty might be getting restless. The longest-running conflict in the presidential search process has been undergraduate student frustration at being completely uninvolved, though some believe that if it weren’t for the fact that students were not allowed to be involved, many probably would not care about the president search to begin with. \nWe’re certain that either of the in-house candidates, because of their IU connections, would be a great fit.