The UC Davis administration announced the cancellation of a public forum Oct. 8 for a candidate for the position of provost and executive vice chancellor.

The forum had always been tentative, for a possible fourth candidate, who was not publicly identified and has now withdrawn.

The other three candidates participated in forums on Oct. 1, 4 and 6. See below for the candidates' names and brief descriptions.

The administration followed the same protocol for the public forums, asking each candidate to make a 10-minute presentation on “The Future of the Public Research University." A question-and-answer session and then a reception followed each presentation.

The candidates, during their visits, also met 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.

• Robert D. Newman, who joined the University of Utah in 2001 as a professor of English, dean of Humanities and associate vice president for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Previously, he was at the University of South Carolina from 1995 to 2001, as a professor and chair of the Department of English, and Texas A&M University from 1985 to 1995, as a professor of English and, during his last years, department chair. He was an assistant professor, Department of English, College of William and Mary, from 1983 to 1985.

He served as a faculty affiliate in the Women’s Studies Program at South Carolina, and he was a visiting professor at Zagreb (Croatia) University.

Newman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s in literature and aesthetics from Goddard College (Plainfield, Vt.) and a doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.