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CORVALLIS - Sabah Randhawa has been named interim provost and executive vice president at Oregon State University succeeding Tim White, who leaves in June to become president of the University of Idaho.

Randhawa served as interim provost for nine months in 2002-03, during the search process that brought Ed Ray to campus as OSU's 14th president. White was interim president during that time.

Since January of 2001, Randhawa has served as vice provost for academic affairs. He has been a faculty member at OSU for 20 years - much of it in the College of Engineering, where he headed the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering from 1993-99. Randhawa was associate dean of engineering for two years before being named vice provost.

He also served as interim dean of OSU's College of Business.

"Sabah has the experience, the leadership and most of all, the respect of the campus to do an excellent job," Ray said. "While we will greatly miss Tim White's contributions and leadership, we wish him well in his new venture and know that he will be an outstanding president for the University of Idaho.

"We are very fortunate to have someone with the experience, intelligence, talent and team-building skills of Sabah, who can step in without a great deal of transition to provide real leadership during this period of major transitions at the university and in all of higher education."

OSU's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs is the university's chief academic officer, with supervisory responsibility for all of the university's academic colleges and schools, the OSU Extension Service, Information Services, the OSU-Cascades Campus and several other units.

The executive vice president also serves as acting president for the university when the president is absent.

Randhawa is a 1976 chemical engineering graduate of the University of Engineering and Technology in Pakistan. He also has a master's degree from OSU, and a Ph.D. from Arizona State University - both in industrial engineering.

Ray said OSU will begin a national search to fill the position permanently.