Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier, IA
04-13-06
Allen says he is prepared to make tough budget decisions
By EMILY CHRISTENSEN, Courier Staff Writer
CEDAR FALLS --- Few people on the University of Northern Iowa campus know
Benjamin Allen well enough to judge his character.
The vice president for academic affairs and provost at Iowa State University
hopes by the time he leaves campus today many will have heard enough about
him and from him to feel comfortable naming him the next university president.
"I hope ... that it will be obvious that I do have integrity," Allen told a group of UNI
faculty Wednesday.
Allen is the final presidential candidate to visit the UNI campus. Stephen
Lehmkuhle, senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of
Missouri system, and John Folkins, vice president for academic affairs and
provost at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, visited the campus last week
and earlier this week.
The Board of Regents is expected to name President Robert Koob's successor
by the end of the month.
Howard Barnes, the department head in design, textiles, gerontology and family
studies, said he was impressed by Allen's comments regarding collaboration.
"It seems like he has a good understanding of how to build a consensus and
work with different groups of people focused on a similar idea," Barnes said.
At ISU, Allen was charged with developing the institution's most recent five-year
plan. Allen told faculty he approached multiple constituent groups on campus and
recruited 44 committee members from those groups to sit at the table. To make
sure the project was finished on time, he formed smaller subcommittees to
handle specific tasks. Allen said he hoped the example would show his
"inclusive" management style.
As provost, Allen said, he is familiar with making tough decisions regarding
university departments and programs. ISU has faced the same budget cuts as
UNI in the last five years and had to make changes accordingly. Allen was one of
the administrators who recommended to ISU President Gregory Geoffroy that
the university combine the colleges of Education and Family and Consumer
Science to form the College of Human Sciences.
"It is a process I only want to do once in a lifetime," Allen said. However, if the
need arises at UNI, it is something he would consider, along with program
elimination.
Lucille Lettow is the university's youth collection librarian and a professor. She
also sits on the campus search committee, so she is trying to stay neutral until all
the official evaluations begin. However, after listening to Allen at Wednesday's
open forum, she said she felt the candidate "has a real sense of what budget
issues we will be facing." But, she isn't discounting the other presidential
hopefuls.
"We have three outstanding candidates," she said.
It was Allen's enthusiasm about coming to the state's smallest campus that
appealed to Sue Joslyn, an associate dean and professor in the Graduate
College.
"Coming from Iowa State, which is a research-intensive university, sometimes
the faculty feels we are not held in the same regard as the faculty at Iowa State
and Iowa. It was refreshing to hear him say he wants to be here," she said.
If chosen, Allen does hope to bring some of his ideas about research and
entrepreneurship to the UNI campus. He believes the university would be wellserved to focus additional energy on grant writing for research projects at UNI.
"It is something that is needed at all institutions," he added.
Contact Emily Christensen at (319) 291-1520 or
Emily.christensen@wcfcourier.com.