The Associated Press

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio - A committee searching for a new president of Shawnee State University has recommended that an Idaho college administrator be hired for the job.

Rita Rice Morris, 56, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, would start on May 27 as Shawnee State's next president if its board of trustees approves her hiring.

She would be paid $150,000 a year. The contract would go until June 30, 2006.

The board's executive committee on Tuesday recommended that Ms. Morris be hired.

The full board is to vote on the recommendation at its meeting Dec. 13.

Ms. Morris has more than 30 years of experience as a college professor and administrator at more than 10 colleges.

She would succeed James Chapman, who left his $137,784 job at Shawnee State in June 2001 to take a job with the University of Alaska at Anchorage, where he is now provost and vice chancellor. Michael Field, Shawnee State's provost and vice president for academic affairs, has been serving as interim president.

Mr. Field would resume his former duties when Mr. Chapman's successor is in place.

Ms. Morris was chosen over the other finalist, Michael T. Marsden, former provost and vice president for academic affairs and research at Eastern Kentucky University. A third finalist, Don Betz, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Central Oklahoma, withdrew from consideration two weeks ago.

They had been selected from 55 applicants.

The Portsmouth school, founded in 1986 in this Ohio River city, serves about 3,600 full- and part-time students.