Final candidates for president visit this week
The final three candidates for UND’s new president visit campus this week, which started with Dr. Laurie Stenberg Nichols, who visited campus Nov. 18 and 19.
Dr. Paul Tikalsky’s visit began Nov. 19 and continues Nov. 20, and Dr. Paul Armacost visits on Nov. 20 and 21.
The Presidential Search Committee will meet Friday, Nov. 22, to select at least three finalists to forward to the State Board of Higher Education. Those finalists will meet with the Board on Tuesday, Dec. 3, and UND’s new president is expected to be named that day.
Open forums
Forums have been scheduled for students, faculty, staff, and the campus and community for each candidate. The campus and community open forum will be live-streamed. Entrance is restricted to users with activated UND Zoom accounts who are UND students, faculty and staff. If you wish to join the webinar, go to und.zoom.us and log into Zoom with your IDM credentials prior to logging into the webinar. Join the forum from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device here and click on the candidate’s name.
Candidate feedback/survey forms
The Presidential Search Committee encourages you to fill out feedback/visit survey forms, which will be available from 7:30 a.m. to midnight while the candidate is on campus for their two-day visit. Please scroll down to the candidate visit schedule to find the survey links.
Parking information
Parking Services encourages you to arrive early; there are a limited number of spaces which will not require a parking permit during the candidate forums. Parking enforcement will be active for all other lots. If you have any questions, please contact us at 701.777.3551 or email parking@und.edu .
- Education Building: Parking Ramp (Passport spots levels 1,4,5) and Starcher lot
- EERC: EERC west parking lot
- Gorecki Alumni Center: Chester Fritz north parking lot
- Leonard Hall: Parking ramp (passport spots levels 1,4,5) and Starcher lot
- School of Medicine & Health Sciences: SMHS parking lots (excluding Passport)
- Witmer Hall: Parking ramp (Passport spots levels 1,4,5) and Starcher lot
Dr. Laurie A. Stenberg Nichols, Interim President, Black Hills State University; Former President, University of Wyoming
- Her forum and public events have been completed.
Dr. Paul J. Tikalsky, Dean, College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology, Oklahoma State University
- Faculty Forum: 10:30 – 11:45 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, Gorecki Alumni Center (completed)
- Staff Forum: 9 – 10:15 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, 100 Leonard Hall
- Student Forum: noon – 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, 114 Witmer Hall
- Campus and Community Forum: 2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, Discovery Room, EERC. A meet-and-greet social will follow.
Dr. Andrew P. Armacost, Dean of the Faculty / Chief Academic Officer, United States Air Force Academy
- Faculty Forum: 10:30 – 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, Gorecki Alumni Center
- Staff Forum: 9 – 10:15 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, Room 7, Education Building
- Student Forum: noon – 1:15 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, 114 Witmer Hall
- Campus and Community Forum: 2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, Discovery Room, EERC. A meet-and-greet social will follow.
About Dr. Laurie Stenberg Nichols
Dr. Laurie Stenberg Nichols is a native of Colman, South Dakota, and received her B.S. in secondary education from South Dakota State University. Advanced degrees include a M.Ed. in Vocational and Adult Education from Colorado State University and Ph.D. in Family & Consumer Sciences Education/Family Studies from Ohio State University.
Dr. Nichols has taught at the secondary and post-secondary levels in South Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Ohio, Idaho and Iowa. She has received numerous teaching and research awards for her innovative teaching, including her involvement in the creation of a 10-state, collaborative, on-line program called the Great Plains IDEA. From 1994-2009, she served as Dean of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at South Dakota State University. In this capacity, Dr. Nichols provided campus leadership on several initiatives including diversity, particularly involving Native Americans, academic advising, and strategic planning. She has secured numerous grants to collaborate with South Dakota tribal colleges in the areas of articulation and curriculum development.
Dr. Nichols was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow, class of 2006-2007, where she spent fall semester on the campus of California State University at Fresno under the mentorship of President John Welty. From August 1, 2008 through mid-June 2009, Nichols served as Interim President at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. On June 22, 2009, she returned to her home campus at South Dakota State University as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, a position she held until 2016. During her service as Provost, she led efforts to strengthen shared governance on campus, revised tenure and promotion standards and processes, developed a first-year experience with a goal of improving retention, developed a comprehensive classroom/learning environment plan, and secured first-time accreditation for several programs, among many other efforts.
On May 16, 2016 through June 30, 2019, Provost Nichols became the 26th President of the University of Wyoming, and the first woman to hold this post. During her three-year leadership, Nichols led the implementation of a major budget reduction, developed a new five-year strategic plan for the university, supported the successful submission of 5-year EPSCoR grant for Wyoming, increased enrollment, created an Honors College and worked tirelessly to improve the University’s relationship with two tribes located on the Wind River reservation. Significant campus facility improvements were completed, including a $100 million engineering building and a $45 million athletic performance facility, with planning underway for $300-400 million residential hall/parking/food service project.
Nichols is currently serving in a one-year interim position as President of Black Hills State University, a public, comprehensive, undergraduate institution located in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Dr. Nichols is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. She is past-chair of South Dakota Voices for Children, a political advocacy group. She was a founding member of the Board that created the Brookings Boys and Girls Club and has served on many other community and civic boards/councils.
Nichols is passionate about working with young people in solidifying educational and career goals and developing leadership skills.
About Dr. Paul Tikalsky
Dr. Paul Tikalsky is Dean of the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma State University, a public multi-campus Carnegie R1 institution with a $1.1 billion annual budget serving more than 24,000 students. He is an award winning educator who is internationally known for his research in high performance and sustainable materials. Dr. Tikalsky has extensive transformational leadership experience at Big 10, Pac 12 and Big 12 universities. He also served on the athletic councils at these universities; chairing the finance committee at OSU and the entire council at Penn State. Under his 8 years of continuous leadership at OSU, the college has exceeded the goals of its strategic plans by hiring 70 new faculty, raising more than $120 million to support scholarship, faculty and facilities, and increasing retention, graduate rates and admission standards. He has engaged an industry-led strategic advisory council, faculty and student leaders to transform education, research, and outreach programs with interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, and humanities components.
He serves on the National Academies/DoD Roundtable linking the nation’s major research universities and DoD Basic Science Office to enhance research partnerships. He holds a DoD secret-level security clearance. Under his leadership the university launched the multi-million dollar Unmanned Systems Research Institute and new programs in Petroleum Engineering and Material Science. During a time of a 25 percent state budget rescission, Tikalsky implementation of a new fiscal model that included annual merit raise programs for faculty and staff and pay equity based on performance reviews. He built a faculty leadership team and advisory council that implemented workload models which resulted in a 50 percent increase in research expenditures, 70 percent increase in extension funding, and an increase in undergraduate degrees by 80 percent. Tikalsky launched a wireless platform for the entire college, its classrooms, labs and offices. The cost savings were reinvested into modern studio and HD classrooms throughout the college. On-going savings fund free nightly tutoring programs for all freshman and sophomore courses.
Tikalsky is accelerating change through the interdisciplinary hands-on ENDEAVOR lab initiative, Grand Challenges Scholars Program, and his leadership in creating an ASEE recognized model for Diversity & Inclusion program. He leads efforts to engage faculty, students, and companies to invest in the transformational pedagogical ideas that increase the number of Native American, Hispanic and female STEM mentors and degrees. His drive to enlist tribal communities and leaders now creates the most native American engineering graduates in the nation. He is an elected Fellow of two professional societies and a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the Czech Republic.
Dr. Tikalsky is from rural Wisconsin and he is a first generation graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Tikalsky was a Professor at Penn State University where he served as the Deputy Director of the Larson Transportation Institute. At the University of Utah, he served as Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental (and Nuclear) Engineering; leading the department to triple its research funding in 6 years and expanding the faculty and enrollment by 40 percent. His more than $11 MM in extramurally funded research programs have led to more than 110 peer reviewed technical papers with students in areas such as geothermal building design, simulation based applied mathematics, and the beneficial use of millions of tons of coal combustion by-products.
About Dr. Andrew Armacost
Andrew Armacost recently completed his service as the Dean of the Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy. With more than 30 years on active duty and 20 years at the Academy, Armacost served in the rank of Brigadier General as the Chief Academic Officer for this nationally ranked institution. As a member of the Academy’s senior leadership council, he was part of the team that guided an annual operating budget of more than $500 million and a capital improvement portfolio of nearly $1 billion.
As the Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer, he had direct responsibility for an annual operating budget of more than $350 million, a faculty of 550, an academic program with 31 majors, and a student body of 4,300. He has been a champion of shared governance, academic freedom, inclusion, student growth, and applied learning and research. The Academy’s sponsored research program of more than $50 million annually makes it the nation’s top-funded research program among undergraduate schools.
Prior to this role, Armacost served as the head of the Academy’s AACSB-accredited business management program, leading 40 faculty members and the Academy’s largest academic major. As a faculty member, he attained the academic rank of Professor while sustaining a particular focus on developing and delivering applied learning opportunities for his students. His additional service to the Air Force has included assignments as the Chief Analyst at Air Force Space Command and as a program manager for systems supporting the intelligence community and the White House.
He has been widely recognized for his disciplinary expertise, academic leadership, and commitment to interdisciplinary learning. His lifetime of work as both scholar and leader earned him recent recognition as a Fellow of his discipline’s flagship professional society and lifetime achievement awards from both the Air Force and the Military Operations Research Society. In addition, he has received numerous teaching, research, and curriculum design awards at the institutional, national, and international levels.
Armacost has been an active member of the Colorado Springs community and in the state of Colorado. He has served on local non-profit boards, as an inaugural member of the governor’s Colorado Innovation Network (COIN), and as founding advisor to the QUAD Initiative, a collaboration between local colleges to craft innovative solutions for Colorado Springs organizations. He has been similarly active in support of academic bodies, including service on the Board of Directors of the Military Operations Research Society and key editorial roles for professional journals.
As a former student-athlete and campus leader at Northwestern University, Armacost is a strong proponent of providing curricular and extra-curricular opportunities that promote growth and development in all students and the opportunity to leverage education for a better society. His degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern, and a Master of Science and PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His wife, Kathy, has been a great partner in supporting the Air Force Academy and the city of Colorado Springs. They have two daughters: Ava, a 2018 graduate of Northwestern, and Audrey, who will graduate from the University of Oklahoma in 2020.
