Four Provost finalists announced at Faculty Council meeting

OSU's billion-dollar campaign, Branding Success, and OSU's Provost position were hot topics during Tuesday's Faculty Council meeting.

Regents Professor John Mowen announced the four finalist candidates to be OSU's new Provost.

The candidates are: Robert Marley, Dean of the College of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Experiment Station at Montana State University; Robert Sternberg, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology and Education at Tufts University; Conrado "Bobby" Gempesaw, Dean of the Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware; Cameron Hackney, who has given more than 600 presentations, is an author and co-author of two edited books and journal articles and has served numerous administrative positions.

Each finalist has undergone a "Skype" interview, and starting March 24, each will visit the Stillwater campus and partake in another interview.

Three of the candidates are from land-grant universities, Mowen said.

"All of these individuals have highly distinguished academic careers," Mowen said.
The final decision for who will be Provost is up to President Burns Hargis.

"We will make it as soon as we can," Hargis said. "Hopefully by July 1, but certainly before the school year."

Deb Engle, with the OSU Foundation, gave the Faculty Council information about the Branding Success campaign, which was launched Feb. 26.

"This campaign is definitely about a lot of new resources," Engle said.

Approximately 3 to 5 million dollars needs to be raised to complete the Student Union renovations. Twenty to 40 million dollars is also needed to add a north wing to the Human Environmental Sciences building.

So far, the university has made good progress, Engle said.

Donors have until Oct. 31 to secure matches Boone Pickens has made for the campaign, Engle said.

"$50,000 is the minimum amount of endowment to be matched by Pickens," Engle said. "The scholarship match will not be received until after his [Pickens'] death."

Regarding endowments in the Big 12, Hargis said, "We are closer to the bottom. There's three main areas that I feel we fall short in."

Those three areas are retention rates, graduation rates and faculty compensation.

"There's a lot of things we need to do to improve the overall campus," Hargis said.