The finalists will make a round of campus visits on Monday, March 1, and Tuesday, March 2, speaking in open forums and taking questions.These events will be open to students, faculty, staff and the public, and they will be available on the web.

Here are brief bios of the three finalists:

Dr. Terry L. Hickey is provost and executive vice president at the University of Central Florida. With a student body exceeding 53,500, UCF is the third largest university in the United States. Dr. Hickey has held his present title since 2006. From 2003 to 2006, he was UCF’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. He has also served as senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron (2000-2003) and dean of the College of Sciences at Old Dominion University (1997-2000). From 1979 to 1997, he was at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he held a succession of administrative positions including associate provost for academic programs and associate vice president for medical center programs. Dr. Hickey received his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of Miami in 1972, and he took postdoctoral training in neuroanatomy at the University of Wisconsin from 1972 to 1974.

Since 2006, Dr. Gary L. Miller has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs and research at Wichita State University, where he is also a professor of biology. Wichita State has a current enrollment of 14,500 undergraduate and graduate students. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Miller was dean of the arts and sciences college and a professor of biology at the University of the Pacific. He chaired the department of biology at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 2002, having joined the biology faculty there in 1988. He also was a member of the zoology faculty at Weber State University, where he served as assistant director of the Museum of Natural Sciences. Dr. Miller received his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Mississippi State University in 1982.

Dr. Mary Jane Saunders has been provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Cleveland State University, which is currently serving more than 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Saunders joined Cleveland State University in 2003 as director of the Biomedical Health Institute and a professor in the department of biological, geological and environmental sciences. She was founding dean of the College of Science, CSU’s second largest college. She was named interim provost in 2006 and provost in 2007. Prior to arriving at CSU, Dr. Saunders was a program officer and deputy division director at the National Science Foundation, director of the Institute of Biomolecular Science at the University of South Florida and an assistant professor in the botany department at Louisiana State University. Dr. Saunders received her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Massachusetts in 1982, and she did postdoctoral work at the University of Georgia from 1982 to 1983.