West Texas A&M University in Canyon has formally named a successor to departing president J. Patrick O’Brien. The new president, Walter V. Wendler, is the former chancellor of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Wendler will start with a salary of over $335,000. As The Amarillo Globe-News reports, Amarillo-native Don Powell headed a search committee that recommended Wendler after narrowing a pool of more than 70 applicants.
Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp cheered the hire. A&M System leaders are looking to Wendler to help WT earn a Carnegie Classification as a doctoral university. To reach this benchmark, WT will need to confer 20 research doctorates in a given year. In the 2014-15 academic year, WT only conferred two such doctorates. Both were in agriculture.
Wendler comes from an architectural background, starting his career in the Department of Architecture at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge in 1975.