URBANA — The search for a new University of Illinois chancellor is winding down, with a decision expected within days.

If tradition holds, the university will simply announce its choice after closed-door interviews with the finalists, with little or no word about who else was considered for the job.

The same procedure was followed in 2010, when the UI introduced Michael Hogan as its new president after a six-month search.

The News-Gazette has learned the identities of two runners-up and other candidates for Hogan's job with help from documents obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

Kumble Subbaswamy, provost at the University of Kentucky, and David Daniel, president of the University of Texas at Dallas, each traveled to Chicago for two rounds of interviews, first with the search committee and then with UI trustees, according to the documents and sources who asked not to be named.

Daniel, who earned all of his academic degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, was dean of the UI College of Engineering from 2001 to 2005 before taking the UT-Dallas job. He did not return calls to The News-Gazette. Susan Rogers, vice president for communications, said she could not confirm any information.

Subbaswamy declined comment through a university spokesman. A longtime professor at Kentucky, he has been provost since 2006 and before that was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, where he earned his doctorate.

Other candidates

David Chicoine, president of South Dakota State University and a former UI vice president, also met with the search committee. And records indicate that Elizabeth Hoffman, a former UI Chicago administrator who is now provost and executive vice president at Iowa State University, and Robert Shelton, outgoing president of the University of Arizona, may have as well. Hoffman was formerly president of the University of Colorado, and Shelton will assume his new job as executive director of the Fiesta Bowl on Aug. 1.

Chicoine, a UI professor and administrator for 35 years before taking the South Dakota job in 2006, said he interviewed with the UI search committee in the spring of 2010.

"It was a great conversation," Chicoine, a South Dakota native, said recently. "It was informative for me and informative for them. We just decided to go our separate ways."

An agricultural economist, Chicoine was dean of the UI College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences from 1995 to 2001, when he was promoted to vice president. The documents show that candidates also flew to Chicago between March 15 and 19 in 2010 from Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Another candidate, from Philadelphia, canceled his or her interview.

UI officials said last year that half of the 10 semifinalists were university presidents and the other half provosts. Eight were from public institutions and nine from highly rated research universities.

Travel documents from the Iowa candidate state she was driven by her husband 45 miles to the Des Moines Airport before flying into O'Hare Airport on March 15, 2010. The only top research universities nearby are the University of Iowa (more than 100 miles away) and Iowa State University (about 40 miles away). Iowa State's president is Gregory Geoffroy, who is retiring.

Hoffman did not return calls to The News-Gazette and declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

Provost at Iowa State since 2007, Hoffman was provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at UI Chicago from 1997 to 2000 before being tapped as the 20th president of the University of Colorado system. She oversaw rapid growth of the school's medical education and biotech research center and consolidated two campuses to create the University of Colorado Denver.

She resigned in 2005 amid a football recruiting scandal and a controversy over an activist professor who compared victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

An economist, Hoffman has also held academic and administrative posts at the University of Florida, Northwestern University, Purdue University, University of Wyoming and University of Arizona.

Shelton, Arizona's president since 2006, confirmed he talked with the UI search committee by phone but wouldn't say whether he met with the panel in person.

"I wouldn't characterize myself as a candidate or a finalist. I did talk with folks," he said last week.

Shelton said they asked his thoughts on the job and the role of the president vis-a-vis the campuses, among other topics. It's common for a committee to consult widely during a high-level search, he said.

Told that records show a flight from Tucson to O'Hare on March 17, when the search panel was meeting in Chicago, Shelton said he couldn't remember whether he flew there or not.

"I fly a lot," he said. "If I went there at that time, it was not for an interview. It was to talk to people about what they were looking for.

"I don't think I was ever a serious candidate," he added. "I think they were talking to a lot of people."

Shelton said he really wasn't interested in the job because he much prefers working at the campus level over a systemwide position, which he held as vice provost for research at the University of California president's office from 1996 to 2001.

Before taking the president's job at Arizona, Shelton was executive vice chancellor and provost at North Carolina from 2001 to 2006. He started his career as an assistant research physicist at the University of California at San Diego. He was a professor at Iowa State from 1978 to 1984, returned to California as chairman of the physics department at UC-Davis and later vice chancellor for research, then took the post with the California president's office.

Confidential process

UI spokesman Tom Hardy said last year that by Carnegie Institution rankings, seven of the candidates were from universities with "very high research activity." Two were designated high-level research universities, and one was a large college specializing in master's programs.

Iowa State, Arizona and Kentucky all are ranked "very high," and both UT Dallas and South Dakota State are high-level research universities.

Hardy declined in a recent interview to comment on the candidates.

"We try to conduct a confidential search," he said. "Typically, candidates for these presidential positions are sensitive to maintaining their privacy for obvious professional reasons. We do our best to uphold that."

UI Trustee Pamela Strobel, who chaired the search committee, also declined comment, citing the confidentiality of the process. Strobel said it was "troubling" that the candidates' names would be disclosed.

Other search committee members contacted by The News-Gazette also refused to discuss the candidates.

Tih-Fen Ting, associate professor at the UI Springfield, said committee members signed a "code of ethics" to keep the information confidential.

She noted that two of the four finalists dropped out of the University of Minnesota's presidential search last year because the school planned to release their names. Eric Kaler was eventually hired.

Iowa State is currently conducting a presidential search and will release the names of three to five finalists, according to spokeswoman Annette Hacker. Presidential candidates have also gone through public interviews in recent years in Texas, Michigan and Florida, where it's required by law.

Hardy cited a report last August by the Chronicle of Higher Education, noting that schools with open searches often don't get the same volume of candidates, or experience level, as universities that keep candidates confidential.

Other finalists

Daniel has spent most of his academic career in the University of Texas system, earning his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Texas at Austin. He served on the faculty there from 1980 to 1996, when he came to the UI.

He was head of the UI's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering before he was named dean of the College of Engineering in 2001. As dean, he oversaw creation of the bioengineering department.

UT Dallas has more than 17,000 students in seven schools, emphasizing engineering, business, mathematics and the sciences. It began as a research institute established by the founders of Texas Instruments, and it joined the University of Texas system in 1969.

Daniel has worked closely with legislators to advance UT Dallas and six other campuses into national research universities, Rogers said. His research has focused on engineering containment systems for waste disposal and cleanup of contaminated waste disposal sites.

Subbaswamy — known as "Swamy" to his colleagues — worked at Kentucky for nearly 20 years early in his career, as a faculty member, department chairman in physics and astronomy, and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 1997, he was appointed dean of arts and sciences at the University of Miami in Florida, a position he held until July 2000 when he took the dean's job at Indiana University.

As provost, Subbaswamy is at the forefront of Kentucky's efforts to become a Top 20 university by the year 2020.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degree in India before completing his doctorate in theoretical condensed matter physics at Indiana in 1976. He also taught at the University of California-Irvine.

Staff writers Paul Wood and Christine des Garennes contributed to this report.

Documents were released a year after initial request

The documents used in this report were released by the University of Illinois in May — more than a year after The News-Gazette's initial April 2010 request — after a ruling from the Illinois attorney general's public access counselor.

The newspaper originally had asked for all documents related to the cost of the $303,000 search for a new UI president in 2010, including travel records. Other media outlets followed suit.

The university sought an exemption with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office, seeking to keep private the names of applicants for the president's job and other identifying information.

Last August, Public Access Counselor Cara Smith ruled that the UI could keep the names of the unsuccessful candidates secret, along with their current employers, but had to produce other information, including the airports, travel agencies and airlines used in the search. The UI had argued that information could be used to identify candidates, invading their privacy and harming future searches.

The university said it disagreed with the state's findings and denied part of the FOIA request. It released nearly 1,000 pages of documents, including many details of the search expenses, but blacked out the disputed information.

The News-Gazette and other media appealed and asked the attorney general to review the case. Madigan's office issued another opinion in November reiterating the earlier ruling, noting that public funds were used in the search.

"Specifically, there exists a legitimate public interest in the scope of the university's search for a new president," the letter said.

The UI did not comply, and The News-Gazette filed another FOIA request in January asking for the travel records and other documents. The UI protested, saying the new request amounted to an "improper and unduly burdensome attempt to revive a completed review process" because it involved records already provided by the UI or "properly denied." It also said the attorney general could not revisit the case because the FOIA law states that "the decision not to issue a binding opinion shall not be reviewable."

However, the public access counselor said the January request was different from The News-Gazette's initial request, so the restrictions didn't apply. She also took issue with the UI's definition of "properly denied," saying the records being withheld were not exempt from disclosure under the law.

The university released the information on May 6.

Julie Wurth and Paul Wood

More on FOIA

This story was reported using records obtained through Illinois' Freedom of In-formation Act, which governs the release of public documents in the state. To learn more about the act and other open-government laws, visit the Illinois attorney general's website: http://foia.ilattorneygeneral.net.