AUSTIN, Texas — A search committee has recommended three finalists for the position of provost and vice president for academic affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.
Finalists are Sheldon Ekland-Olson, dean of UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts; Edie N. Goldenberg, dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan; and Morton Lowengrub, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. The search committee is chaired by UT psychology professor Judith Langlois and UT pharmacy professor Steven Leslie.
The position became vacant June 1, 1997, when Provost Mark Yudof left UT to become president of the University of Minnesota. UT Austin Vice Provost Stephen A. Monti has served in the role of provost ad interim since that time.
“I am pleased with the quality, experience and talent we have been able to bring into this process,” UT President Larry R. Faulkner said. The finalists will meet with administrators, faculty and various groups on campus during the next several weeks.
A professor in the sociology department at UT Austin from 1989 to the present, Ekland-Olson has served as dean of UT’s College of Liberal Arts since 1993. From 1991 to 1993, he served as associate dean. The winner of numerous teaching awards, Ekland-Olson served as a special assistant to the chancellor for the UT System from 1988 to 1991. He earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology, anthropology and chemistry from Seattle Pacific University in 1966 and a doctorate degree in sociology from the University of Washington in 1971. He was a Russell Sage Fellow at Yale Law School from 1969-71.
Goldenberg has served as dean since 1989. She has been a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan since 1985. Goldenberg has a master’s degree and a doctorate degree in political science from Stanford University and earned an undergraduate degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Her administrative experience includes serving as director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies at the University of Michigan, and she also worked for more than two years at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on significant reforms to the federal civil service system.
Lowengrub has served as dean of arts and sciences since 1988. He also was dean of research and graduate development from 1982 to 1988, and served as director of the Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study from 1986 to 1988. He was chair of the mathematics department from 1977 to 1980. His research interests include applied mathematics with emphasis on mathematical theory of elasticity, mixed boundary value problems and integral equations.
He received a bachelor of arts degree from New York University in 1956, a master’s degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1958 and a doctorate degree from Duke University in 1961.
