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OREM — One woman and three men have been selected as finalists to be the next president of Utah Valley University, according to a statement from the Utah State Board of Regents released Thursday.
A 24-member search committee recommended to the regents four finalists: Bradley J. Cook, provost at Southern Utah University; John R. Rosenberg, Washington Irving Professor of Spanish and American Relation at Brigham Young University; Astrid S. Tuminez, regional director for corporate, external and legal affairs in Southeast Asia for Microsoft; and Matthew J. Wilson, president of the University of Akron.
“After an extensive national search, the Utah Valley University Presidential Search Committee has narrowed the applicant pool to these four highly qualified candidates. The committee is honored to recommend them to the board of regents for its consideration in selecting a new leader for the university,” said Regent Steven Lund, search committee co-chairman, in a prepared statement.
The next president will succeed Matthew Holland, who is stepping down because he has been called as a mission president by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to serve in the North Carolina Raleigh Mission starting in July.
Holland was appointed UVU president in 2009, the first leader to hold that position after the institution attained university status in 2008.
The finalists will be on the UVU Orem campus next Thursday to meet with groups representing faculty, staff, students, and administration.
Each finalist will participate in a public meeting that afternoon, where attendees from the UVU community and the general public can ask questions of the candidates.
The candidates' meetings with constituency groups will be conducted in the Classroom Building on the Orem campus at 800 W. University Parkway.
The schedule of meetings is as follows:
1-1:50 p.m. John R. Rosenberg
2-2:50 p.m. Bradley J. Cook
3-3:50 p.m. Matthew J. Wilson
4-4:50 p.m. Astrid S. Tuminez
More information on the public meetings is available at uvu.edu/presidentialsearch.
On April 20, the board of regents will interview each of the candidates in closed session.
The board may convene a public meeting at UVU — Sorensen Center, Centre Stage — at 5:45 p.m. that day to select the president or conduct a meeting at another time.
Here's a more extensive look at the backgrounds of the four finalists:
Bradley J. Cook is also a professor of history at SUU. Prior to his current position, he served as president of the Abu Dhabi Women’s College in the United Arab Emirates. He has had 25 years of administrative experience in higher education, eight spent at then-Utah Valley State College as vice president of College Relations and later as vice president of Academic Affairs.
Cook has special research interests in Islamic educational theory, comparative religion and international and comparative education. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University and a doctoral degree in Middle East Studies from the University of Oxford.
John R. Rosenberg is also associate director of BYU's Faculty Center, where he is responsible for training academic administrators. For two decades he has worked with the BYU-Public School Partnership where he currently serves as a senior fellow. He collaborated with the Institute for Educational Inquiry in Seattle in promoting the democratic purposes of public education and served as a leadership associate and as an Agenda for Education in a Democracy Scholar.
Prior to his current role, Rosenberg chaired the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at BYU and was dean of the College of Humanities. He earned his bachelor’s degree from BYU and his master’s and doctoral degree from Cornell University.
Astrid S. Tuminez was previously vice dean of research and assistant dean of executive education at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. While in those roles she trained more than 2,000 government officials and private-sector professionals in leadership and organizational change.
Her previous positions include senior consultant to the U.S. Institute of Peace, director of research at AIG Global Investment, and program officer at Carnegie Corp. of New York. She previously ran the Moscow office of the Harvard Project on Strengthening Democratic Institutions.
Tuminez holds a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree from Harvard University, and a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Matthew J. Wilson has nearly 30 years of international experience in academic, business and legal matters in the United States, Asia and the Pacific. He specializes in international business, intellectual property, commercial litigation, international dispute resolution, and Japanese law.
Prior to serving as its president, Wilson was dean of the Law School at the University of Akron. Before that, Wilson served as associate dean and professor of law at the University of Wyoming, distinguished international scholar at Kyung Hee University Law School in Seoul, and senior associate dean and general counsel at Temple University Japan in Tokyo. Wilson earned two bachelor's degrees from the University of Utah and a juris doctor degree at Temple University.
