Geoffrey Dahl spoke about the importance of university relationships and having a clear, confident leadership style at his open forum on Thursday afternoon in the Pioneer Room.

Dahl was announced as the third candidate for the next endowed dean of the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences on Sept. 25. He is currently serving as the Harriet Weeks Professor of Animal Science at the University of Florida.

In the open forum, Dahl emphasized his “four big ticket areas” in his vision for Iowa State. Those areas include stakeholder relationships, legislative relationships, shared governance and resource acquisition.

Dahl said integrity and open-mindedness are important to him those values are also important to Iowa State.

“The reason that we’re here is the students,” Dahl said. “We need to make sure that they have the best possible experience here to prepare them for their futures.”

Dahl said a dean needs to have strong relationships with students, producers, university administration, government agencies and NGOs.

Dahl continued on to say it is evident that strong relationships are important to Iowa State since the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is already administered by multiple colleges.

“A dean has to have influence from department chairs, extension directors and other advisory input to make the appropriate decisions,” Dahl said. “An administrator needs to keep in mind that they don’t have all the answers.”

Good relationships with state funding agencies, federal funding agencies, foundations and industry partners are all important, Dahl said.

“It’s pretty apparent that funding agencies want to find projects,” Dahl said. “There’s less willingness to sort of give across the board funding.”

In regards to leadership, Dahl said he hopes to bring integrity, confidence, decision-making and clarity to Iowa State. He said he wants to be bold and authentic as well as act with a sense of urgency.

“What we’re doing is important,” Dahl said. “It matters. And we need to let other people know what we’re doing is important.”