Presidential candidate visits conclude this week

Paul Tikalsky’s visit concludes Wednesday, while Andrew Armacost’s visit will begin Wednesday and conclude on Thursday

The final three candidates for UND’s new president are visiting campus this week.

Dr. Laurie Stenberg Nichols was here on Monday and Tuesday. Dr. Paul Tikalsky’s visit began on Tuesday and will conclude on Wednesday, and Dr. Andrew Armacost will visit campus on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Candidate Visit Schedules can be found here. The Presidential Search Committee will meet Friday 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. Live streaming of Campus and Community Forums will be available for all UND faculty, staff and students who have activated UND Zoom accounts. People who’d like to join the webinar should go to und.zoom.us and log into Zoom with their IDM credentials prior to logging into the webinar. They can join the forum from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device by going to this link and clicking on the candidate’s name.

Candidate feedback/survey forms

The Presidential Search Committee encourages all interested parties to fill out feedback/visit survey forms, which will be available from 7:30 a.m. to midnight while each candidate is on campus for his or her two-day visit. Please scroll down to the candidate visit schedule to find the survey links.

Parking information

Parking Services encourages visitors 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. Anyone with questions is invited to contact UND Parking Services at 701.777.3551 or by email at 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. Paul J. Tikalsky, Dean, College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology, Oklahoma State University

• 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. 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.