After 20 years of service to Iowa State, Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Thielen will soon retire.

Thielen, 62, will leave his position, a $122,000-a-year job, effective Dec. 31. He has been at the university since 1977. Thielen will remain on faculty, teaching one class in the Department of Professional Studies in Education through the spring semester.

He will retire May 31, 1997.

“I want the freedom to do what I want to do when I want to do it. This job is so consuming that you don’t have the freedom to do that,” he said.

Thielen was vice provost for student affairs at the University of Minnesota at Duluth from 1973 to 1976 and dean of student services at the University of Maine from 1970 to 1973.

Diversity, a foreign concept on many college campus during the beginning of Thielen’s career, is an area of change that Thielen said he is glad to have helped bring about.

“When I came in ’77, the student body wasn’t very diverse. I mean diverse in many issues. In the last 20 years we’ve been able to recruit diversity in many areas,” he said. “…The university community will have to learn to live with this increased diversity.”

He said he is proud to have had a hand in developing Iowa State’s image as a place where students can practice what they learn in the classroom through involvement in clubs, organizations, student governmental bodies and university jobs.

“We’re viewed as a place that involves students,” he said.

ISU President Martin Jischke praised Thielen’s performance, citing recent facility improvements through student funding for the Lied Recreation Center, the Memorial Union and the new Student Health Center, scheduled for completion in May.

“Iowa State has benefited greatly from Tom’s 20 years of leadership in identifying and meeting the needs of students. He is a nationally recognized leader in student affairs, and it has been a pleasure to work with him. I wish him well in his retirement,” he said.

An interim vice president will be appointed before Dec. 31, and a national search will be conducted for Thielen’s successor.

Thielen said he feels fortunate to leave in good health. He has a home on Lake Superior where, he said, he will spend most of his time after leaving ISU. He will spend three or four months out of the year in Ames.

“I would like to do a little bit of consulting with issues of higher education and volunteer work with political and social issues that I’m interested in,” Thielen said.

Thielen and his wife Evelyn have six children and eight grandchildren.