Familiar Face Is a Finalist to Lead Texas Southern; Oregon Research Unit Expands to Florida

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By EUGENE MCCORMACK and PETER MONAGHAN

WELCOME BACK: Texas Southern University's Board of Regents announced this month that John M. Rudley, vice president for administration and finance at the University of Houston, is the sole finalist in the institution's presidential search. The top position at the financially troubled university has been filled on an interim basis since April 2006, when its previous leader was fired amid a spending scandal.

Mr. Rudley, who recently finished serving for seven months as interim president of the University of Houston and interim chancellor of the University of Houston system, is returning to the site of his first academic appointment. During the 1980s, he held several positions at Texas Southern University, eventually becoming the vice president for fiscal affairs. He later held similar jobs at the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee Board of Regents before landing at Houston.

Mr. Rudley, 60, will take over during a tumultuous period in Texas Southern's history. The historically black institution is still reeling from the controversy surrounding its former president, Priscilla D. Slade, who was fired after an audit concluded that she had misspent nearly $650,000 in university money on personal expenses between 1999 and 2005.

Ms. Slade was brought to trial over the spending imbroglio, but a jury deadlocked in October. In May the university's former chief financial officer, Quintin F. Wiggins, received a 10-year prison sentence on similar charges.

Adding to the unrest, Gov. Rick Perry fired Texas Southern's entire Board of Regents in April 2007 for its ineffectiveness in fund raising and oversight. The institution came to the governor's attention when it requested $25-million in emergency appropriations from the state. And even more trouble arrived in December 2007, when Texas Southern's accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, placed the university on probation for one year because of financial-management and governance issues.

State lawmakers are on record saying that they will not give the university any extra money until they are presented with an effective reorganization plan. So Mr. Rudley knows he has his work cut out for him.

"Obviously the university is going through a tough time," says Mr. Rudley, "but the academic programs are very strong, and the faculty is very strong." He says that although he wants to raise the university's graduation rate, "job No. 1 is making sure the financial side of the house serves the institution, instead of making problems for it."

Mr. Rudley says he hopes to begin soon after his appointment is official. Texas law requires the Board of Regents to wait 21 days before finalizing its decision.

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STATE OF CHANGE: Faced with the prospect of dwindling federal and local financing, a research institute at Oregon Health & Science University has accepted a large incentive package to expand not within its home state, but in sunny Florida.

After its establishment with state funds in 2001, the university's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, whose scientists work on treatments for deadly infectious diseases, received additional money from the Oregon Opportunity, a public-private fund-raising partnership designed to increase the state's investment in biotechnology research and development. The allocations permitted the institute to recruit leading researchers and to build its facility in Beaverton, on OHSU's West Campus. Its directors pitched the project as a way to spark growth in the region's biotechnology industry — more companies, more jobs.

But this month, citing a downturn in federal research dollars, university officials announced that the institute would accept an offer from the State of Florida to expand across the country into a new facility on the state's Treasure Coast. The institute's new location will be in a fast-growing network of biotech-research parks at the Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition, which is located in Port St. Lucie, on the Atlantic Coast.

Jay Nelson, director of the institute, said in a written statement that the "institute in Florida will allow for unique regional partnerships while expanding our reach nationally." Mr. Nelson, who will direct both the Oregon and Florida branches, said he looked forward to collaborating with the life-sciences organizations that Florida has enticed to what it now calls its "Research Coast."

According to Daniel Dorsa, the university's vice president of research, Oregon could not match the money that Florida offered — including a combined $118-million from the state's Innovation Incentive Fund and St. Lucie County. That will permit the institute to recruit 20 principal investigators over the next 10 years, along with about 200 support staff members. Florida will also build the institute a new facility on a 120-acre site.

Mr. Nelson and other university officials said researchers at the institute's two branches would collaborate extensively. Spinoff revenue from the Florida facility, from inventions and companies, would stay in Florida, but the Oregon university would receive a portion of payments based on the extent of its involvement in the projects.