spacetoday.net: Former NASA administrator Goldin named university president

Posted: Wed, Jul 9, 2003, 2:53 PM ET (1853 GMT)

Boston University has selected former NASA administrator Dan Goldin to be its next president, the university announced late Tuesday. The university's trustees picked Goldin from an original slate of 50 candidates, and said they expect to reach a final agreement with Goldin within 30 days. Goldin served as NASA administrator from April 1992 through November 2001, the longest tenure of any previous head of the space agency, and is best known for his "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy that reshaped many of the agency's programs in the 1990s. Since leaving NASA Goldin has worked as a consultant, corporate board director, and as a fellow at the Council on Competitiveness. Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the US with nearly 30,000 students enrolled, and has worked to move out of the shadow more prominent nearby universities such as Harvard and MIT. The selection of Goldin was seen as an unusual move for the university, since Goldin does not have a graduate degree and has no experience in academia. Previous reports indicated that Goldin was added to a list of finalists for the position at the insistence of John Silber, the chancellor and former president of the university.