Philip Frana, candidate for the University Honors Program administrative director, visited campus Tuesday as the topic of discussion at an open forum.

Originally from Nebraska, Frana moved to Iowa at a young age and attended Iowa State. He obtained a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Iowa State.

Currently, he is assistant professor of the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas.

“I am here on a mission,” he said. “I am painfully excited.”

One of Frana’s main goals for the Honors Program at Iowa State is to turn it into an honors college.

“Accreditation is coming and it is coming sooner than we think,” he said.

Frana said competition among honors programs and colleges is fierce.

“If we don’t act soon, the University of Iowa is going to take this from us,” he said.

Frana also stressed the importance of faculty involvement. He said it is important to have faculty members who are primarily dedicated to the Honors Program.

“I care about Iowa State and I care about its students,” he said. “But we have to do better than this.”

Another one of Frana’s goals – if given the position – is to start an online community for Honors students to interact. He compared his idea to something similar to Facebook or MySpace, but not too similar.

“It will work better than other online forums you may know of,” he said. “This is a learning community concept rather then a social concept.”

The University of Central Arkansas Honors College has 600 students, bringing in 150 freshman each year.

“Our retention rate is unbelievable,” he said. “Something like 93.4 percent of our students who start [in the honors program] finish,” he said.

There will be another open forum at 1:10 p.m. Thursday in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union for candidate Laurie Fiegel from Stony Brook University in New York.

Gene Takle, interim director of agronomy and geological and atmospheric sciences and interim faculty director of the University Honors Program, said the search committee will meet Friday afternoon to discuss the candidates.

“You never know how things go,” Takle said. “But our goal is to have it done by the end of the week.”

Takle said the position is very important to Iowa State.

“The needs and opportunities for high-ability students are high on the president’s priority list,” he said.