The Board of Regents will confirm the appointment of Richard Seagrave as Iowa State’s interim president and begin discussing the search for a new permanent president at its meeting Wednesday and Thursday.

Terms of Seagrave’s presidency will be discussed. His salary will be $180,000 plus benefits.

Seagrave said being interim president is a difficult job.

“The university has changed a lot in the last 20 years,” he said. “We now have to compete very hard for faculty; we have to compete very hard for superior students; we have to compete for resources, so just take those three things, and that’s a full plate. And the president kind of has to lead that effort.”

The regents will approve policies for selecting a permanent president, starting with the ISU Presidential Search and Screen Advisory Committee.

“What they’ll do is approve the slots of the commissions of people to be on the search committee,” said Frank Stork, regents executive director. “Then the actual people will have to be identified later.”

According to the tentative schedule, members will be appointed to the committee in July.

Ten slots for faculty and administration members are on the proposed committee, consisting of a dean and nine faculty members, made up mostly of distinguished faculty with consideration toward representing the different colleges and women and minority faculty.

Three staff members and three students will be on the search committee.

One student will be chosen in consultation with the Government of the Student Body, one with the Graduate Student Senate and one representative of graduate teaching/research assistants.

There are slots for four alumni, two chosen in consultation with the ISU Alumni Association and two with the ISU Foundation.

Up to three additional search committee members may be chosen by Owen Newlin, president of the Board of Regents.

Benjamin Allen, dean of business, is to be appointed head of the presidential search committee.

Regent Clarkson Kelly said it is important to get feedback from all those affected by a new president.

“We hope we can get someone the faculty approves of,” he said. “We, the regents, want to help the faculty do what they’re trying to do. Of course, we also want the administration to be successful.”

Student approval of a new president is also pertinent, he said.

“We are very interested in what the students think,” Kelly said. “We as regents are trying to represent the residents of Iowa, and toward our duties at the regent universities is trying to get the best university president we can get, and to do that we want the students to participate in this and tell us their thoughts so we can get the best person that they can have for our university.”

Criteria for a new president will be developed by the search committee and the regents, and Stork will hire an executive search firm.

Four finalists are scheduled to be identified in November or December and then voted on by the regents in December or January.

“You get these groups together and they work on this and work on this and work on this, and when they get it down — especially the faculty — to the best people, we regents can vote on this,” Kelly said.

Also on the agenda for the board is Iowa State’s strategic plan for 2000 to 2005, which was presented to the regents by President Martin Jischke last month.

Kelly said he thinks the strategic plan should be approved despite Jischke leaving the university in August.

“We feel that Dr. Jischke has done such a wonderful job for the university, that the strategic plan that he helped develop should not be affected,” he said.

The preliminary budget for Iowa State for fiscal year 2001 will be discussed at the meeting as well.

The proposed general fund operating budget is $397.9 million, a 5.2 percent increase over the fiscal year 2000 revised budget.

State appropriations and possible tuition increases will be considered.

The FY 2001 budget includes reallocations totaling $7.6 million, $4.1 million of which will be spent on program allocations and $3.5 million on addressing the budget shortfall.

Seagrave said he has no plan yet for dealing with the budget cuts Iowa State is facing.

“I’ll have to see where we are on the entire plan. I have not been fully briefed on what are problems are there,” he said. “It’s obviously a major concern, not only how to get through this year but what to do about next year.”