Iowa State presidential finalist David Cook: ‘It’s coming home’

AMES — Ames native and Iowa State University graduate David Cook — the second finalist to succeed outgoing ISU President Wendy Wintersteen — on Thursday told a campus crowd during a public forum that he wasn’t looking to leave his post as president of North Dakota State University.

“Life is good for us … We really love where we’re at,” he said of his wife, with whom he has three grown children. “But this opportunity, it's the only one I probably would ever even consider. It's home. It's deeply personal. Our family are here. It's where we grew up. It's where education opened my eyes to what it can do for generations of people.

“And so it's coming home,” he said, “and that's why we're here.”

Cook, 55 — who’s been leading Fargo-based North Dakota State for more than three years, since May 2022 — said he also has a deep passion for the land-grant mission that NDSU and Iowa State share.

“The way a new president walking in here needs to lead, I think, is first and foremost having great respect for the land-grant mission and the amazing success that's happening here,” Cook said to a prompt asking him — essentially — to summarize his leadership ideology and plans for his first 90 days at the helm.

Breaking down his priorities into three steps, Cook highlighted Iowa State Extension and Outreach to Iowa’s 99 counties; the importance of engaging and listening to the campus, with a student focus; and understanding the unique higher education landscape right now.

“There's a big, long list here of some tough, tough things that are happening,” he said. “And for us, we’ve got to find the opportunity — the narrative around four-year degrees, the challenges around affordability and affordability gaps. We know low income students struggle nationally to get a degree. That's a problem. We got to think about what our role is and try to help that.”

He talked about declining international student enrollment and waning enrollment across the board.

“The other thing that's just very real here is the enrollment cliff,” he said. “And by the way, you're killing it. Five straight years of enrollment growth. That's incredible. Guess what? It's going to get a lot harder, and everybody else is going to kick, scratch and claw.”

He talked about the need to diversify funding sources with federal research dollars at risk. And Cook urged the campus to continue its work with the Iowa Legislature — boasting his experience doing that in North Dakota.

“I counted it up,” he said. “Before the last legislative session up in North Dakota, I had 184 legislative meetings before the session started — to start to build relationships to help people understand complex issues.”

Getting up to speed on Iowa’s legislative process and priorities would be among his top priorities — with the session beginning when he would in January.

“You have to figure out how that works,” he said. “Where does your budget start? Who's the chair of that committee? Who’s going to be the chair of the committee? Is it going to cross over? What's the relationship between chambers? Is there new leadership? What have we done in the past where we could have done better? What are the opportunities?”

Cook, like the first finalist who participated in a public forum on Wednesday — Cornell University dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Benjamin Houlton — fielded questions from the audience, including one on how he would handle an order from the Board of Regents and governor to fire en employee for their social media posts.

Like with Houlton, the moderator reworded the question to ask how Cook deals with his governing board.

“My boss would be the Board of Regents, so I'm going to work with them closely, tackling and managing difficult conversations,” he said, stressing the need to work collaboratively. “Making tough decisions is definitely just part of what's going to have to happen. And I think that's what (Wintersteen) did, and I would support her in that.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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