A former Fortune 500 CEO, a former University of Vermont president and two internal candidates will interview Monday to become the University of Minnesota’s interim president.

The Board of Regents chose the finalists Thursday from a pool of 21 applicants to take over for Joan Gabel when she leaves next month to become chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh.

They are:

• Jeff Ettinger, 64, the former CEO of Hormel Foods, who ran and lost as a Democrat in the First Congressional District special election last fall;

• Tom Sullivan, 74, who was a law professor, provost and senior vice president at the U before serving as president of the University of Vermont from 2012-19;

• Myron Frans, 72, who was Gov. Tim Walz’s budget manager before Gabel hired him as the U’s senior vice president for finance and operations in 2020; and

• Mary Holz-Clause, 67, chancellor of the U’s Crookston campus since 2017.

Board chair Janie Mayeron said she thought the one-week window for applicants, which closed Monday, could hurt the pool, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

“I am thrilled with the applicant pool that we have received. And I am actually floored with the number of applications we received in such a short period of time,” she said Thursday.

Regents plan to interview the four finalists Monday and make a hiring decision soon after, likely the same day.

During Thursday’s public meeting, before the finalists’ names were public, regents discussed the applicants in an anonymized fashion. They first eliminated 15 who failed to garner interest from at least half the board, then ruled out two more after a discussion and a second round of voting.

Ettinger

When the U later announced the finalists’ names, it did not say which person corresponded to the anonymous candidate codes used in the public meeting. However, Candidate N, who received seven votes from regents wanting to interview him, appears to be Ettinger.

Regent Doug Huebsch said Candidate N would be good at building trust and setting the foundation for a permanent president. Wheeler said the candidate has “really strong leadership experience” and “engages directly in community service.” Mary Turner sees him as a problem solver who has managed through crises. James Farnsworth was happy with the candidate’s salary expectation, which the U did not made public.

However, Mayeron and Robyn Gulley were troubled by Ettinger’s lack of experience in higher education: “My big question is this person is beyond light, to me, on the academic side,” Mayeron said, questioning how he would be accepted by faculty and students given it’s only a one-year job.

Other candidates

Here’s how regents described Sullivan, Holz-Clause and Frans:

• Candidate G (five votes in the second round): This person has a lot of higher education experience, as well as connections to the state and academia, has worked with legislators and “brings a different perspective than the others,” Mayeron said.

• Candidate L (seven votes): This person has a “deep understanding of higher education, a deep knowledge of our organization,” Regent Penny Wheeler said. Mayeron said the applicant “checks all of the boxes with enormous depth and breadth.”

• Candidate T (nine votes): This candidate is committed to the U’s vision and is best positioned among the applicants to “hit the ground running,” Tadd Johnson said. Yet, their appointment would have other effects on the U. “This candidate checks all the boxes for me in just huge ways with flashing lights … (and) creates challenges for the university, as well,” Mayeron said.

The two who were eliminated after the discussion were described as a “change-maker” with an ambitious vision for the U, and someone who has experience in “industry” and “government relations” and has “ties to anti-union work.”

Regents intend to pick someone who does not want a permanent appointment as president. They haven’t set a salary range for the one-year job.