New provost to be named on campus today

Announcement set for 2 p.m. University President-elect Judith Rodin will announce the next permanent provost at a press conference today in Houston Hall's Bodek Lounge at 2 p.m. The nominee for the provostship, who was selected after a six month search, must be confirmed by the University Board of Trustees before taking office this summer. Rodin and other University officials refused to disclose the name of the new provost yesterday. But University sources said yesterday the next provost will be a white male from a non-Ivy League institution. Rodin said the selection of the new provost represents the culmination of a tremendous effort by both herself and the 17-member search committee, chaired by Economics Professor Andrew Postlewaite. Rodin said she has spent the past few weeks interviewing finalists and deliberating over her selection which will be her first official appointment as president-elect. She said she finalized her discussion with the provost-nominee over the past weekend. And she added the provost will start work on July 1, the same day Rodin is scheduled to take office. Several top University officials criticized the pace of the provost search over the past semester, claiming a new provost should have been selected within weeks of Rodin's confirmation. But both Rodin and Postlewaite have maintained that the search proceeded on or ahead of schedule, citing the fact that little could be done until a new president had been appointed. Postlewaite had said previously that factors, such as winter break, delayed meetings of the search committee. The Provost's Search has proceeded under what some have characterized as the tightest secrecy of any recent search at the University, with some top administrators claiming as late as yesterday they had not been told who the next provost is. "I tried listening in to closed door conversations," one administrator said. "I tried using the bell of my clarinet against the door. I tried bribery and looking very sad but no one will tell me anything. I tried everything." The provost-nominee will replace Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson who took office last summer. Lazerson succeeded Michael Aiken who left the University to become chancellor of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. The provost is the University's chief academic officer, responsible for all educational policies, including undergraduate and graduate education. The provost reports directly to the president. Rodin was Yale University's provost for two years before stepping down last week to work on the transition. She is also taking time off to get married next week.