UW Regents Announce Final 5 For Chancellor

Only one of the finalists for chancellor at UW-Madison is from the UW System.

Regents on Wednesday named five finalists for the job that will become open at the end of the school year when current Chancellor Rebecca Blank leaves to become university president at Northwestern.

The five are: 

• Ann E. Cudd: Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh.
• Marie Lynn Miranda: Professor of Applied Computational Mathematics and Statistics and former Provost, University of Notre Dame.
• Jennifer L. Mnookin: Dean, School of Law, and Ralph and Shirley Shapiro Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Daniel A. Reed: Presidential Professor of Computational Science and former Provost, University of Utah.
• John Karl Scholz: Provost and Nellie June Gray Professor of Economic Policy, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The university asked for questions from the campus community, and will ask those questions of each of the finalists. The five are also scheduled for on-campus visits during the first week of May.

After that, regents say they will suggest a single candidate.

The search for a new Madison chancellor began back in January, and was run by a search committee that featured university regents, faculty members, and students.

Blank has been chancellor at the Madison campus since 2013, and was both credited and criticized for how she managed the school during the early months of the coronavirus outbreak.

The hope is to have her replacement on campus by the time students report back for classes this fall.