Business executive named University of Iowa president

Former Kraft Foods and IBM executive and business consultant Bruce Harreld will be the 21st President of the University.

The other finalists were Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov, Ohio State University Provost Joseph Steinmetz and Tulane University Provost Michael Bernstein.

“I definitely think it’s important to have somebody who is academic minded, because I mean its great to have someone who’s business minded and understands the principle of finances, but at the same time the university is so much more than finances”, said UI junior, Kelly Below.

Herrald said he doesn’t want his resume to take center stage; instead he wants to focus on doing the job he was hired to do.

The Board of Regents’ decision to pass over three candidates with traditional academic credentials in favor of Harreld is a signal that members believe the university should operate more like a nimble business and less like a slow-moving bureaucracy stuck in old thinking.

The selection of J. Bruce Harreld, a former senior vice president at IBM and lecturer at Harvard Business School, immediately outraged professors who had overwhelmingly rated him as unqualified.

As one of his first moves as president, Harreld said he will start reaching to groups and individuals to start prioritizing issues that need to be addressed.

The board interviewed the four candidates and deliberated 90 minutes in closed session before voting unanimously for Harreld.

Nationally, it remains rare for major universities to have someone without an academic leadership background as president.

In a statement, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said he looks forward to working with Harreld, “to ensure Iowa students have access to high-quality, affordable higher education while ensuring that our colleges and universities play a key role in by converting university research into career opportunities for our graduates”. According to U of I, he helped save IBM in the 1990s.