Provost for main UT campus is selected

3/6/2007

University of Toledo President Dr. Lloyd Jacobs yesterday picked a senior adviser at the National Science Foundation to become main campus provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, a position that will help shape classroom experiences for roughly 20,000 students.

Rosemary Haggett, 53, is acting director of the government-funded science foundation's graduate education division and a professor of animal and veterinary sciences at West Virginia University.

Dr. Jacobs said the university will enter into salary negotiations with Ms. Haggett.

The former main campus provost, Alan Goodridge, was paid $213,627. Mr. Goodridge stepped down as provost last year after Dr. Jacobs assumed the presidency of UT following its merger with the Medical University of Ohio.

With the Ohio government linking many of its future subsidies to instruction in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, Ms. Haggett impressed the UT search committee by stressing the importance of a comprehensive university that offers a broad education.

"Scientists need to have art, literature, and history, and other ways of thinking," Ms. Haggett said yesterday. "And students who are not science majors need to be science-literate in a complex, global society."

Carter Wilson, a politics professor, chairman of the main campus faculty senate, and co-chairman of the search committee, complimented the breadth of Ms. Haggett's administrative experience.

She was dean of WVU's college of agriculture, forestry, and consumer sciences from 1994 to 1999 before becoming that university's associate provost and later moving to the science foundation.

Ms. Haggett received a doctorate in physiology from the University of Virginia in 1979.

Dr. Jacobs said with Ms. Haggett's background, the university should attract more federal research dollars. "She'll bring a lot of information as well as charisma and energy," he said.

Ms. Haggett was among three finalists, including current interim main campus provost Rob Sheehan.

"I'm disappointed, but I feel positive for the institution," said Mr. Sheehan, who also is a candidate for the presidency of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.

The UT board of trustees must approve Ms. Haggett as provost before she could join the administration in July.