Cook earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and speech communication from Iowa State University. He earned his master’s degree and his Ph.D., both in organizational communication, from the University of Kansas.
I would say of the two candidates he’s going to be more hands on. He currently sits as the chairman of the MVC Football Presidents committee. He also has experience going in front of the state legislature asking for funding. That’s going to be valuable if we want tax revenue from sports wagering to go to athletics
Asking the right question for CF right there
I've worked in administrative and cabinet-level positions at multiple colleges/universities over the years, and I've seen presidential hires of very accomplished individuals who didn't have as deep of an academic background in teaching or research, and instead brought expertise in things like business, organizational management, industry/corporate leadership, etc. Some of them were hired over finalists who were pure academicians. It didn't go well. Most faculty want fellow academicians in that role as opposed to someone who may have impressive degrees but hasn't been teaching or publishing research.
Yeah I think it's common sense to hire someone with an academic background to be the president of an academic institution. I think the trend of hiring an "academic outsider" sort of thing has only been a recent, dumb trend. Thankfully the search committee didn't go that route.
www.ndsu.edu
I was actually quite pleased with both candidates. Either one IMO would have been fine. Welcome President Cook.
When you make the President’s position political and throw him into a sports firestorm like LSU, you get what happened the other day when the governor forced the president to backtrack on comments he made about the athletic director. It threw fuel to the fire and made his first day very terrible for that situation.
