After months of interviews, a committee has narrowed the field down to four finalists in the search to fill the position being vacated by College Dean Edward Ayers.
The four remaining candidates for the position are University Environmental Science Prof. George Hornberger; Elizabeth Langland, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Purchase College, State University of New York; Daniel Larson, Eberly College of Science dean at Penn State University; and Paul Lasko, chair of the biology department at McGill University.
Hornberger, who has taught at the University since 1991, was recently named by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as one of three Outstanding Scientists of the Year in 2007.
His research specializes in the effect of hydrological processes on the transport of dissolved and suspended sediments within catchments and aquifers.
Hornberger served as associate dean of the sciences at the University from 2002 to 2006 and received his bachelor's and master's in hydrology at Drexel University, along with earning his doctorate in hydrology at Stanford University. He is currently serving as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
According to Hornberger, he did not anticipate seeking the position as dean.
"It is a big job and quite a formidable task in front of the next person who is appointed," Hornberger said. "I had not considered it before, but I guess I was nominated by several people and agreed to be a candidate because it is an important time for the College, and I thought that if I could help, I would."
In contrast to Hornberger's strong science background, Langland offers a more humanities-based perspective.
Langland, along with experience as provost at Purchase College since 2005, also has experience in the classroom -- she currently works as a professor of literature and cultural studies at Purchase.
Langland received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Barnard College and her master's and doctorate degrees, with departmental honors, from the University of Chicago.
She served as associate dean for faculty affairs at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida until she relocated to the University of California, Davis in 1999 to serve as an English professor and dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
Langland is also the author and editor of eight books and numerous articles.
Larson, a former University physics professor, brings a strong physics background to the candidate pool and currently holds the title of dean of the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University.
He graduated summa cum laude from St. Olaf College with a degree in physics, and earned his master's and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.
Larson has focused his research on using the special characteristics of negative ions to study processes and properties of general importance in atomic, molecular and optical physics.
According to Rebecca Kneedler, who served as Faculty Senate chair at the University after Larson, he was "very energetic and a visionary" during his time at the University.
Finally, with an extensive background in biology, Lasko has focused much of his research on genetics, in particular the vasa gene of Drosophila.
Lasko received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he focused his work on the vasa gene.
He joined the biology department at Canada's McGill University in 1990 and was promoted to the position of full professor in 1999. Since 2000, he has served as the department's chair and is a founding member of McGill's Developmental Biology Research Initiative.
He was awarded the Young Scientist Award by the Genetics Society of Canada in 1998 and in 2004 received the society's Award of Excellence.
While three of the four candidates offer strong science backgrounds, James Childress, chair of the search committee, said a fifth candidate who had a humanities background dropped out for personal reasons.
He said an advertisement was placed by the University in The New York Times before the search began, which "emphasized that science was one of the priorities; [however] ... we did not choose people because they were in the sciences or in the humanities," Childress said. "We chose them because they were strong candidates."
University administrators have met with three of the candidates and will meet with the fourth today.
Childress said he did not want to discuss the individual candidates until he met with the selection committee members and weighed the input from various groups.
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