The search for a chancellor continues in Bloomington.
IU announced the reinstatement of the campus’ chancellor position in June and held a series of listening sessions in September. Four chancellors have held office at IU Bloomington, but the campus has not had one since 2006.
IU President Pamela Whitten wrote in June the position is needed due to the “challenges of higher education” and the “size and complexity” of the Bloomington campus. All of IU’s other eight campuses across the state have a chancellor.
Faculty voted no confidence in Whitten in April and held resolutions for her and Provost Rahul Shrivastav to resign in May.
“While the role has been meshed with the IU president’s for as long as most can remember, the challenges of higher education paired with the size and complexity of the Bloomington campus have made it clear that a chancellor is needed,” she wrote.
Whitten wrote that the chancellor will report directly to her, overseeing the Provost’s Office. Whitten said the chancellor will also collaborate with the campus community, work to increase faculty participation and manage diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, but the specifics of exactly how the chancellor will achieve these goals is unknown.
The university has partnered with search firm Isaacson, Miller along with a 16-member committee of IU students, faculty and staff, for the search.
At a listening session Sept. 5, one IU faculty member asked about the history of the Bloomington chancellor position.
“This place looks so different than back then,” Danielle DeSawal, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council and co-chair of the search committee, said at the session. “I wouldn’t say that we are mirroring it, but rather we’re learning from it.”
John W. Snyder
John Snyder started as a history professor at IU in 1956 and served as vice president and dean of undergraduate development from 1967 to 1969. He then became the first acting chancellor on the Bloomington campus in 1969, holding office until July of that year.
IU Historian James Capshew said IU reorganized and needed a temporary leader in Bloomington at the time.
Students protested the Vietnam War during Snyder’s tenure and organized a lock-in of Ballantine Hall in May 1969. Around 130 students locked IU administrators inside the Ballantine Faculty Lounge until the board of trustees agreed to meet and discuss rising tuition costs.
Byrum E. Carter
Byrum Carter joined the university in 1947 in the government department — now known as the political science department — and became a professor in 1960. He served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1966 until the Board of Trustees named him chancellor in August 1969.
He led academic development, campus budget and recruitment, promotion, tenure, retention and termination of faculty and staff. He also supervised student services, according to IU’s website.
In the 1969-70 academic year, IU had 29,308 students at the Bloomington campus, making up more than half of the university’s total enrollment of 54,949.
“He was well-known around campus,” Capshew said. “He was sort of one of the ‘heavy hitters’ that faculty looked up to.”
The Board of Trustees voted to reorganize IU in 1974. The Bloomington and Indianapolis chancellors became vice presidents of their respective campuses.
Carter resigned in June 1975 and retired from IU in 1986. He died in 2015.
Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis
Kenneth Gros Louis started at IU in 1964 as an English and comparative literature professor. He won the Ulysses G. Weatherly Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1970 and became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1978.
Gros Louis became vice president of the Bloomington campus in 1980. In 1988, he was promoted to vice president for academic affairs for all campuses and Bloomington chancellor.
Capshew said Gros Louis was faculty-oriented and presided over the Bloomington Faculty Council. He also said Gros Louis was a gifted speaker.
“He was really good about having good things to say,” he said. “There are a lot of ceremonial things a chancellor has to do, whether it’s a conference, scholars, students, faculty, donors, alumni — they have to be very adept at talking to a lot of different kinds of people.”
Gros Louis developed the Herman B Wells Scholars Program in 1990. The merit-based program pays the full cost of attendance for four years for nearly 20 undergraduate students in the Hutton Honors College every year.
“He loved students,” Capshew said. “He was a great friend of students. He had friends everywhere, and he was very similar to Herman B Wells.”
Gros Louis also expanded the IU School of Journalism to be system-wide and independent in 1989 and established the Office of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Services — now known as the LGBTQ+ Culture Center — in 1994.
He served as chair of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation for 15 years. The committee was renamed as the Big Ten Academic Alliance in 2016 and allows all 18 Big Ten universities to share expertise, leverage campus resources and collaborate with one another.
“His peers recognized his leadership qualities,” Capshew said. “He was ‘the big guy.’”
Gros Louis retired in 2001.
Sharon Brehm
Sharon Brehm succeeded Gros Louis and served as the campus’s first female chancellor from 2001 until she resigned in 2003. She also taught in IU’s department of psychological and brain sciences and served as president of the American Psychological Association.
She was inducted into the Presidents Circle in 2011, which honors donors who give at least $100,000 to the university. She died in 2018.
After Brehm’s departure in 2003, Gros Louis returned as interim senior vice president and chancellor in 2004.
Then-IU President Adam Herbert struggled to fill the position permanently. A search committee recommended three candidates in October 2005, but Herbert rejected the candidates and decided to extend the search process.
IU faculty voted no confidence in Herbert that year because of his failure to find a chancellor, and he announced he would not renew his contract, which expired in 2008.
Herbert and the Board of Trustees ultimately decided to restructure the campus’s leadership in 2006, eliminating the chancellor position in favor of a provost.
The provost became the chief academic officer, while Herbert absorbed the remaining duties.
Gros Louis was appointed as the second-ever university chancellor that year, a title which, at that time, had only been held by Gros Louis’ close friend and former IU president Herman B Wells from 1962 to 2000. Gros Louis held the title from 2006 to 2011, and he died in 2017.
“Gros Louis was seen as an heir for Wells,” Capshew said, “in the sense of having the biggest interest of the whole university.”
Michael McRobbie became IU’s third university chancellor in 2021 after a 14-year run as president.
