The Georgia Tech Provost Search Committee has made its recommendations for three finalists for the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs position.

The three finalists - all current Georgia Tech administrators - are: Sue Rosser, dean of Ivan Allen College, Gary Schuster, dean of the College of Sciences, and William Wepfer, vice provost for Distance Learning and Professional Education.

Rosser has served as dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts since 1999. She was director of the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and professor of anthropology at the University of Florida-Gainsville from 1995 to 1999. In 1994-1995, she served as Senior Program Officer for Women's Programs at NSF. From 1986 to 1995 she served as director of Women's Studies at the University of South Carolina, where she was a professor of family and preventive medicine in the medical school.

She has edited collections and written approximately 120 journal articles on the theoretical and applied problems of women in science and technology and women's health. Rosser has written nine books, the most recent of which is "The Science Glass Ceiling: Struggles of Academic Women Scientists" (2004) from Routledge. She served as the Latin and North American co-editor of Women Studies International Forum from 1989-1993 and currently serves on the editorial boards of NWSA Journal, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, and Engineering and Women's Studies Quarterly. She has held several grants from the National Science Foundation, including "A USC System Model for Transformation of Science and Math Teaching to Reach Women in Varied Campus Settings" and "POWRE Workshop." She also serves as co-principal investigator on a $3.7 million ADVANCE grant from NSF.

Schuster has served as dean of College of Sciences since 1994. He spent 20 years in the chemistry department at the University of Illinois before his arrival at Tech and was the head of the Department of Chemistry there from 1990-1994. Schuster became the Vasser Woolley Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2001. He was an NIH post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, a fellow of the Sloan Foundation, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Guggenheim fellow. In 1994, the American Chemical Society named Schuster the Cope Scholar. Schuster was the recipient of the 2006 Charles Holmes Herty Medal.

Schuster has continued to do research while publishing more than 100 refereed journal articles since his arrival at Georgia Tech. The College of Sciences has undergone numerous changes under his leadership. In the school of Chemistry and Biochemistry alone, more than 75 percent of the faculty have been hired during his tenure as dean, and the school has jumped in U.S. News and World Report rankings from 45th to 24th for graduate schools.

Wepfer joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1980 and served as the associate chair of graduate studies in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. He grew the graduate program from 244 to 687 students. During Wepfer's tenure as associate chair, 106 students won prestigious NSF Fellowships.
Wepfer became vice provost for Distance Learning and Professional Education (DLPE) in 2002 and initiated a major reorganization. The DLPE seeks to provide Georgia Tech faculty with exceptional support and service in the delivery of educational programs to traditional credit students as well as life-long learners. Wepfer stresses the importance of distance-learning and professional education as compliments to Tech's strong education and research programs.

The final three candidates will meet with President Wayne Clough, administration officials, and deans in the coming weeks. An announcement of the new provost is expected by the end of August. The new provost will replace Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau, who has been named the president of the California Institute of Technology.

The provost and vice president for Academic Affairs is the chief academic and budget officer of the university. All academic, research and related units including the colleges, the library, professional education, and economic development report to the provost. Additionally, the provost administers the budgets of these units.

The provost oversees academic and budgetary policy and priorities, ensures the quality of the student body and maintains educational excellence. In addition, the provost also has oversight responsibility for issues associated with the recruiting, hiring, retention and performance of faculty and academic administrators and for the Institute's promotion and tenure process.