NIU completed the final phase of its eight-month provost search by approving Raymond W. Alden III as Ivan Legg’s replacement at the June 15 Board of Trustees meeting.

Alden, executive vice president and provost at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will take his position July 1. Alden will replace Legg, who retired June 1 after five years as NIU’s chief academic officer.

Alden was one of three finalists interviewed by a nineteen-member search committee made up of NIU faculty, staff and university administrators. The committee was also aided by Isaacson, Miller, an executive search firm centered in Washington D.C.

“We are also indebted to all of the faculty and staff who participated in interviews and shared their thoughts during the evaluation process,” NIU president John Peters said in a press release. “All of our finalists were impressive and highly qualified — that reflects well on our search and our institution.”

When asked what attracted him to NIU during the interviewing process, Alden said, “When I saw the Web site and the announcement, it became really clear to me that it was an institution that was on the move.”

Legg earned a salary of $214,344 in 2005 at the provost position, one of the highest-paid administrative jobs at NIU. Alden’s salary will become available with the publication of NIU’s 2006-07 fiscal year budget, which will be released next month.

Prior to his decade with UNLV, Alden spent 21 years at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he served on the faculty and, during the last 15 years, as director of the school’s multidisciplinary Applied Marine Research Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Florida, as well as a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.

While at UNLV, the Campus Network awarded Nevada-Las Vegas second prize in their annual “Pollys,” handed out to expose political correctness in academe, thanks in part to a punishment doled out by Alden. Alden headed a committee that suspended a UNLV professor for lecturing that homosexuals planned more for the short-term than heterosexuals in part because they are less likely to have children. The ruling was actually overturned by the university president, who said professors have a right to teach lecture ideas that are controversial.