After living all over the world, Rollin Richmond, Iowa State’s new provost, is glad to be back in the Midwest.

“One of the things that I found was that my years in Florida and New York brought me back again and again to my years in Indiana and the Midwestern culture and ethic and approach to life, which I found that I missed,” Richmond said.

“People are hard-working; they’re interested in community. They work to keep community functioning.”

Richmond said he is a strong believer in education, and ISU’s commitment to education was partially what attracted him to the university.

“There is nothing that is more important to me both intellectually and emotionally than education,” he said. “Education is a tremendously important way of improving and stabilizing society and for some reason, Iowans have figured that out.”

Richmond said the first priority of a university should be to serve its undergraduates. He said ISU works to provide for its undergraduates, and he will work to follow that tradition.

While academics are important, Richmond said, there are other aspects of undergraduate education in which he hopes students can participate.

“One of the things that I like to see students leave the university with is a sense of the wonder of the world of ideas,” he said.

Richmond said he also hopes students come away from a university with connections, not only to faculty, but to their fellow students.

“I’m a firm believer that students learn at least half of what they leave an institution with from their student friends as well as from the faculty,” he said.

As provost, Richmond said he will address the issue of faculty salaries.

“I’m a little surprised that faculty salaries at Iowa State University are not as strong as they perhaps should be,” he said. “I will work with the president to see if we can’t make that a little bit of a higher priority.”

Richmond also is concerned about faculty tenure.

“I think that it is an important part of the academic world,” he said. “I think that faculty need to feel that they have the right to explore, in their scholarship and in their teaching, issues that may not be palatable to the administration or to their colleagues.”