Public forums for candidates for provost and executive vice chancellor are scheduled for today (Oct. 1) and Oct. 4 and 6, with two of the candidates identified as Kim Elaine Barrett, dean of Graduate Studies at UC San Diego, and Ralph J. Hexter, president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

The forum for Barrett is set for today, while Hexter's forum is set for Oct. 4. (See below for more information on these candidates.) The name of the third candidate is due to be released the day before the Oct. 6 forum.

The candidates are identified when their curriculum vitae are posted on Chancellor Linda Katehi's website (click on Executive Recruitments).

A forum for a possible fourth candidate is tentatively scheduled from Oct. 8, and the CV for that candidate would be posted on Oct. 7.

Each forum is scheduled from 2 to 3:15 p.m., but at two different locations:

• Oct. 1 — Conference room, Hyatt Place UC Davis hotel, on Old Davis Road Extension, at the south edge of the main campus

• Oct. 4, 6 and 8 — Ballroom A, UC Davis Conference Center, next to the Graduate School of Management, across from the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts

The protocol is the same for each forum. Each candidate has been asked to make a 10-minute presentation on “The Future of the Public Research University." This will be followed by a facilitated question-and-answer session, and then a reception.

The candidates, during their visits, also are scheduled to meet with the leaders of various constituent groups on the Davis and Sacramento campuses.

The new provost and executive vice chancellor will replace Enrique Lavernia, who has held the office since early 2009. He is staying on as provost until his successor comes on board; at that time, Lavernia will return to his post as dean of the College of Engineering.

People wishing to submit confidential comments regarding the candidates may do so by writing to provostsearch@ucdavis.edu. Comments on each particular candidate should be sent no more than 48 hours following his or her forum time.

The candidates who have been identified so far:

• Kim Elaine Barrett holds a Bachelor of Science degree in medicinal chemistry and a doctorate in biological chemistry — both from University College London.

She wrote her thesis on "Studies on the Functional Heterogeneity of Mast Cells," and, from 1982 to 1985, served as a visiting fellow in the Mast Cell Physiology Section, Laboratory of Clinical Investigation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health.

She has been affiliated with UC San Diego since 1985, starting as an assistant research immunologist, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, and subsequently becoming a professor of medicine. She served as vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine from 1999 to 2006, and as interim chief for Academic Affairs, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, from 2003 to 2004.

She became dean of Graduate Studies since 2006.

• Ralph J. Hexter has been president of Hampshire College, a private liberal arts school with about 1,500 students, since 2005, and before that he held administrative posts at UC Berkeley. He is a professor of classics and comparative literature.

In his curriculum vitae, Hexter says Hampshire is “renowned for the student-centered, portfolio-based course of study it pioneered.”

At Berkeley, he served as dean of Arts and Humanities, within the College of Letters and Science, from 1998 to 2005. During his last three years as the Arts and Humanities dean, he doubled as the college’s executive dean. He served as chair of Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Literature from 1996 to 1998, and also taught at Yale and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

He holds bachelor’s degrees from Harvard (English) and Oxford (classics and modern languages), master’s degrees from Oxford and Yale, and a Ph.D. from Yale.

More information on executive recruitments.