The University of Hawaii Board of Regents is scheduled to vote Thursday on the appointment of Tom Apple, provost at the University of Delaware, as UH-Manoa’s next chancellor.
UH has been vetting applicants since Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw announced in August that she will step down as the head of UH’s flagship campus when her contract ends June 30.
If approved Thursday, Apple would be paid $439,008 a year, according to the regents’ meeting agenda. Hinshaw earns $337,672.
The proposal before the regents calls for giving Apple a five-year term, beginning June 18 and running through June 30, 2017.
Regents will also vote on the appointment of Erika Lacro as chancellor of Honolulu Community College. Lacro would be paid $146,328 a year and be given a three-year term.
Apple was among four finalists for the UH job. The others were Carlo Montemagno, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati; Robert C. Holub, chancellor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and Kim A. Wilcox, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Michigan State University.
Apple joined the University of Delaware in July 2005 as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of chemistry, the university website says. He became provost on July 1, 2009.
The University of Delaware has 16,000 undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students, and 1,175 full-time faculty. The university has a $910 million budget.
The University of Hawaii chancellor’s office, created in 2001, has an annual operating budget of $14.7 million.
In a letter posted on UH’s website, hawaii.edu, in which he expresses interest in the chancellor’s post, Apple wrote that "UH-Manoa’s geographic position provides a unique multicultural opportunity among American universities."
Apple wrote that he and his wife have made annual visits to Hawaii over the past 17 years. "It is a place not only of outstanding beauty which instructs us that we need to be good stewards of the land and sea, but has taught us also that to carry the spirit of aloha means to be caring and open to what others can teach us."
Apple earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Pennsylvania State University in 1976 and received his doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Delaware in 1982. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1983.
Apple joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Nebraska as an assistant professor in 1983 and was named a tenured associate professor there in 1988. He also was a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he rose to the rank of dean of graduate education and vice provost. He was named dean of arts and sciences at the University of Delaware in 2005 and then that institution’s provost in 2009.
His research in magnetic resonance of zeolite and polymeric materials has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other private sources.
He was recently recognized for his work in relations with Chinese universities.
His wife, Anne, is a veterinarian.
The regents meeting will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine, Room MEB-314, at 651 Ilalo St. in Kakaako.
