American U. Picks New President

American University, which has had four presidents in as many years, will announce today that the trustees' executive committee has selected a new leader, the head of an Atlanta-based group that brings together academics and school teachers.

The board of trustees would need to ratify the selection of Benjamin Ladner, 52, at its May 6 meeting, but that is a formality, university officials said. Ladner, who has headed the National Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Sciences since 1980, is expected to take office this summer, said American University spokesman David Taylor.

The leadership of American University has been in turmoil since 1990, when Richard Berendzen resigned the presidency after being charged with making obscene phone calls. His successor, Joseph Duffey, resigned after less than two years to head the U.S. Information Agency. AU's provost at the time, Milton Greenberg, who served as interim president between Berendzen and Duffey, retired last summer. Elliott Milstein, dean of AU's law school, now serves as interim president.

Ladner has never been a university administrator. Trustees said they selected him because they liked his consensual management style and felt he meshed well with the existing vision and leadership of American University, which has 11,700 students.

"We didn't want a candidate who was going to go into a place ... and turn it upside down," said Bill Jacobs, search committee chairman.

"He seems to have the right balance of experience in the education field and enthusiasm [and] energy," said Edward R. Carr, chairman of the trustees. "It'll be nice to have some stability in the president's office."

Unlike Duffey, who already had headed a university and had a national reputation, Ladner, an Alabama native, will have a greater stake in bringing attention to the university, said faculty members and trustees.

"He's got that fire in the belly, [and] he had clearly done his homework," said John S. Douglass, chairman of the Faculty Senate. "I think Ladner is going to be with us for the long haul."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Ladner said, "I'm not an entrepreneurial careerist. The reason I want to come is to be here for a long time... . It's a nice fit."

As president of the National Faculty, Ladner has extensive fund-raising experience and many contacts on Capitol Hill, trustees said. American University's $ 27 million endowment is one-tenth the size of local rivals George Washington and Georgetown universities.

The National Faculty was founded in 1968 by Phi Beta Kappa, the American Council on Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities to improve the quality of teaching by exposing secondary school teachers to the latest scholarship in their fields.

The organization's three offices employ about 25 people, and about 600 scholars are affiliated with it. A typical program would bring one or two college faculty members together with one- to two-dozen teachers for a few days.

"Having not run a major university before, Ladner will have to run very hard at first," Carr said. "But he has all those people [already in the AU administration] to help him."

Before heading the National Faculty, Ladner led the Department of Religious Studies and was a philosophy professor at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where he specialized in the philosophy of language and the interplay of religion and culture. He received a doctorate from Duke University and a bachelor's degree from Baylor University, where he won a basketball scholarship.

American University's yearlong search process drew re'sume's from about 300 candidates, Jacobs said. Last winter, the board selected Scott Cowen, dean of Case Western Reserve University's management school, from among three finalists. But Cowen turned down the job.

Four more candidates -- Ladner among them -- were invited for interviews earlier this month. The other three candidates were George D. Langdon, former president of Colgate University; John W. Rosenblum, former dean of the Darden School of Management at the University of Virginia; and Ilene Nagel, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

"Ladner is a go-getter. He was the underdog. People were expecting it to be Langdon because he had the most experience," said junior Aaron Nathans, editor-in-chief of the Eagle student newspaper. "We need somebody who can ... make [AU] someplace dynamic."

The details of Ladner's contract have not been worked out, but he probably will be given a three-year contract and an annual salary of $ 200,000 to $ 250,000, Jacobs said.

"I'm terribly excited... . [At AU] I found a spirit that is genuinely open and a sense of community that is rare," Ladner said.