With President Martin Jischke’s departure coming Aug. 14, the Iowa Board of Regents is on the lookout for an interim president.

Regent Clarkson Kelly said the board will consider administrators from Iowa State, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa.

“We’re looking for someone from all three of the schools for temporary president,” he said.

It is important to find an interim president who will not want to campaign for the permanent job of Jischke’s successor, Kelly said.

“We want someone well qualified who is not interested in becoming president,” he said.

The interim president will have big shoes to fill, Kelly said.

“Hopefully, we can end up with someone as good as Jischke, and that’s very hard to do,” Kelly said.

Frank Stork, regents executive director, said the interim president will likely be a current ISU faculty member.

“We hope that there can be a decision that the board can discuss at its June meeting, June 14 and 15,” he said. “Based on past procedure, interim presidents tend to come from the same university, and that’s what I expect the board to do.”

Warren Madden, vice president for Business and Finance, said he hasn’t been approached about the job.

“I’ve been at Iowa State for a long, long time, and I’ll certainly do anything I can to assist the university,” he said. “I will serve the university if the Board of Regents asks me to.”

Provost Rollin Richmond said he does “not particularly” want to be interim president.

“I very much enjoy being a provost, and I basically prefer being an academic,” Richmond said. “I’ve just been in office for eight months, I have some projects and new initiatives underway, and I would prefer to stay in the provost office and help to get them well established.”

If asked by the regents to be interim president, “I would certainly discourage them,” Richmond said.

Kelly said the selection process for Iowa State’s next full-time president will take from six to nine months.

“We have not started the process,” he said. “This process at a large university is like molasses because you have to have so many people involved.”

Many advisory committees will be involved in choosing the new president, and the regents will have to hire a search firm, he said.

“I’m going to guess that we’ll have a lot of candidates, maybe 100 candidates,” Kelly said, adding the regents will select a president from five candidates the committees have narrowed the field down to.