Four finalists for the position of provost at Ball State University will take part in a variety of meetings as well as hour-long open forums as part of their formal visits to campus.

The forums will be webcast live and archived at www.bsu.edu/up/provostforum. The candidates' curriculum vitae can also be found at this site.

All forums are open to the public and will take place in Bracken Library, room 225. Faculty and staff will receive feedback forms to complete regarding any interaction they have with the provost candidates during the visits, including the open forums, from their department heads or unit supervisors. Faculty and staff are asked to use this form for their comments. Feedback forms intended primarily for students will be available at the open forums.

The candidates, along with the dates and times for their open forums, are:

• Yatish T. Shah, provost and executive vice chancellor, University of Missouri-Rolla, 3:30 p.m., March 2 (PDF: View Vita)
• Belinda McCarthy, dean of the College of Health and Public Affairs, University of Central Florida, 3:30 p.m., March 13 (PDF: View Vita) UPDATE (3/10/06): This candidate has withdrawn her name, and the forum has been cancelled at her request.
• Terry King, dean and LeRoy C. Paslay Chair and Professor in Engineering, College of Engineering, Kansas State University, 3:30 p.m., March 15 (PDF: View Vita)
• Bjong Wolf Yeigh, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Engineering Policy, St. Louis University, 3:30 p.m., March 16 (PDF: View Vita)

Shah has been provost at University of Missouri-Rolla since 2001, taking on the additional role of executive vice chancellor in 2004. From 1997 to 2001, he served as chief research officer at Clemson University in South Carolina. Prior to his work at Clemson, Shah served as distinguished professor and dean of the College of Engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Shah earned doctoral and master's degrees in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan.

After serving one year as interim dean, McCarthy has served as dean of the College of Health and Public Affairs at the University of Central Florida since 1990. From 1984 to 1989, she was associate dean for the School of Social and Behavior Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her previous work at the UAB included serving as director of the Women's Studies Program from 1987 to 1989.

McCarthy earned doctoral and master's degrees in criminal justice from the State University of New York Albany and a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Georgia.

For three years, Yeigh served as dean of the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology at St. Louis University, stepping down in January to focus his attention on leading the Center for Science, Technology and Engineering Policy, one of six centers for excellence he established during his tenure as dean. Prior to moving to St. Louis, Yeigh spent four years as assistant provost for science and technology and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Yale University.

Yeigh earned doctoral and master's degrees in civil engineering and operations research from Princeton University, a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in engineering science from Dartmouth. He also attended Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I.

King has served as dean of the College of Engineering at Kansas State University since 1997. Prior to moving to Kansas, King spent much of his academic career at Iowa State University, where he served as chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1990 to 1997.

A chemical engineer, King earned a doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree from Iowa State University.

Ball State's provost position was vacated by Beverly Pitts on June 30, 2005, when she became president of the University of Indianapolis.

(Note to editors: For more information, contact provost search committee chair H. O'Neal Smitherman, vice president for information technology, at (765) 285-1045 or osmitherman@bsu.edu. )