Last week, the 24-person search committee dedicated to filling Iowa State’s new Chief Information Officer position released the names of four candidates under consideration.

William Crowell, J.L. Albert, John Dickson and Walter Weir, coming from backgrounds of academic, corporate and government institutions, are the last standing from a field of nearly 500 applicants.

The four candidates will visit Iowa State this month to present a public talk titled “A Vision for Computing and Information Technologies and a View on Diversity at an Academic Institution” at 3 p.m. in the Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium in Howe Hall.

Dickson will speak Oct. 8, Weir Oct. 13, Crowell Oct. 21 and Albert Oct. 30. The candidates could not be reached for comment.

Alicia Carriquiry, associate provost, served on the selection committee and said narrowing the field was “a tough decision.

“The pool of applicants we received was very strong,” Carriquiry said. “The final candidates represent a wide range of expertise.”

The chief information officer’s duties to the school will involve managing information technology services, special projects and new initiatives for the university.

This will mean a change in operations for three of Iowa State’s computer-related departments. Currently, Administrative Technology Services and the Telecommunications office report to Vice President for Business and Finance Warren Madden, and Academic Information Technologies reports to the Office of the Provost. All three departments will now report to the chief information officer.

John Kingland, director of telecommunications, said while it is hoped the new position will eliminate poor communication among the departments, the creation of the position was more representative of a growing trend among universities.

“Our organization now is very typical of universities in the past,” Kingland said. “Now, because technology has merged quite a bit with other fields, it’s become more typical of schools to have a [chief information officer].”

One of the remaining candidates for the job is William Crowell, formerly staff vice president and chief information officer of Des Moines’ Meredith Corporation. Crowell applied for the position at Iowa State following a stint from August 2002 to April 2003 at Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli-based generic drug company currently being sued by the Massachusetts Attorney General for allegedly inflating drug prices paid for by the state’s Medicaid program. Carriquiry said Crowell left the position voluntarily, and is no longer associated with Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Crowell has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Richmond in Virginia and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia.

Other candidates for the position include J.L. Albert, John Dickson and Walter Weir.

Albert has worked at Oklahoma State University since 1990. He received a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and a master’s degree in natural resource management from Oklahoma State.

Dickson served as associate director of the National Institute of Health for one year before serving as director of division of computer system services in the Center for Computer Information Technologies at the institute. He studied at Williams College in Massachusetts, receiving a degree in physics. He later went on to receive his doctorate in physiology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Weir previously held the position of chief information officer at the University of Nebraska, and worked in technology-related fields at Fordham University and the United States Military Academy at West Point. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Nebraska and a master’s degree in business and computer science from the Florida Institute of Technology.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.