Iowa State is losing its director of Administrative Information Services after nearly 40 years of employment, but someone is already in place to fill the vacancy.

Maury Hope, vice president for Information Services at Hawkeye-Security Insurance Group in Des Moines, was selected to fill the position left by Wayne Ostendorf, who is retiring after a long career with Iowa State. Hope will begin his new position today.

Warren Madden, vice president for Business and Finance, said the AIS director has many responsibilities.

“Basically, the Administrative Information Services is the unit of the university that processes financial data such as paychecks, grades, schedules and administrative computing operations,” he said. “It’s a $6 [million] to $7 million activity with about 60 employees, and Maury will be in charge of that.”

Johnny Pickett, controller and assistant vice president for Business and Finance, was on the search committee for this position and said there were many qualified candidates.

“I think we had around 25 candidates for the position, given that this is a very competitive field,” she said.

Pickett also said there were some important skills the committee members were looking for in the candidates.

“In addition to normal education and number of years of experience, we were also looking for a track record of leadership and experience in an organization,” she said. “We were also looking for someone with the ability to provide strategic planning in Information Services for a large university like Iowa State.”

Madden said Hope met much of that criteria.

“We were looking for someone with experience as an administrator and with computing operations. This is an important part of Iowa State, and Maury has the qualities we wanted. He’s experienced,” he said.

Ostendorf said it is also important that the AIS director be able to deal well with the constant changes in technology that accompany the job.

“One of the things you have to learn in this business is change and that change is constant. I’ve seen four to five generations of change since I started here,” he said.

Though Pickett did not personally select Hope for the job, she said she had an idea why he was chosen.

“What I see is that he’s coming from a similar operation in terms of technical configuration. He’s also familiar with the university and is coming from a job where he had to support information systems well and cost-effectively,” she said.

Ostendorf said he has truly enjoyed his years as the director of AIS and thinks Hope will enjoy his new job, too.

“It’s been a wonderful professional career for me and Iowa State is a great place to work,” he said. “There’s great people here, and I believe we have a good information system here and are supported well by the faculty.”