The fourth and final candidate for the next Iowa State president, Wendy Wintersteen, was announced Wednesday morning.

Wintersteen currently serves as Iowa State’s dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Similar to the last three candidates, she will be on campus Thursday, Oct. 12 to meet with faculty, staff, students and the community throughout the day.

Wintersteen received her bachelor’s in crop production from Kansas State University in 1978 and has spent a bulk of her career at Iowa State.

Receiving her doctorate in entomology from Iowa State in 1988, Wintersteen has held a variety of positions at the university since – minus a short stint with the USDA-Extension Service in 1989 to 1990 as the acting national pesticide education program leader.

In 2000, Wintersteen also held a short position as Interim Executive Associate Dean for the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station.

Wintersteen has served as the dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Science since 2006, where she oversees 317 faculty members, 484 staff members and 5,509 students. She works with a current budget of $172 million with $51.5 million in sponsored research.

Additionally, through a $3 million gift, Wintersteen became the first endowed dean in Iowa State’s history, according to her vitae.

As dean, Wintersteen cited background in fundraising, research, fiscal management, diversity and the student experience.

Currently, CALS boasts a retention rate of 90.4 percent and four-year graduation rate of 63.1 percent. Career placement rate is 98 percent, according to her vitae.

Since 2010, Wintersteen said in her vitae that the number of multicultural students in the college has increased 83 percent under her leadership and through implementing diversity programs.

Other finalists for president include Pamela Whitten, senior vice president of student affairs and provost at the University of Georgia; Dale Whittaker, the provost and executive vice president of the University of Central Florida, Orlando; and Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The search boasts diversity in its finalists, compared to University of Iowa’s and the University of Northern Iowa’s last presidential searches in which all the finalists were white men.

Wintersteen will visit Iowa State for an on-campus interview and an open forum from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union. Anyone can attend the open forum or view the live stream at https://www.presidentsearch.iastate.edu/finalists/wintersteen.

Open forums were held Monday through Thursday. Each candidate’s name was released 24 hours before their campus visit. The Board of Regents will make a final decision on who Iowa State’s next president will be on Oct. 23.