The Penn Stater Magazine

Steven Leath’s Mom has Reason to be Proud

September 30, 2011 at 12:41 pm Tina Hay Leave a comment

On any given day, I’m likely to get a phone call from someone who thinks they have a story idea for the magazine. Some of the ideas are genuinely good; some aren’t.

When someone starts off by saying that the story idea involves their son or daughter, I tend to be, shall we say, a little skeptical. But the proud mom who called me this morning, Marie Leath, was right: Her son is newsworthy.

It turns out that on Tuesday, Steven Leath ’79 was named president of Iowa State University.

Leath was a plant-science major at Penn State, went on to get his master’s and doctorate, and spent some time working in plant pathology for the U.S. Department of Agriculture before joining the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 2001. Since 2007 he’s been that school’s VP for research and sponsored programs—and on Feb. 1 he’ll become a college president.

You can read the Des Moines Register’s article about his appointment here.

Ironically, the man he’ll replace at Iowa State also has Penn State ties. Gregory Geoffrey has been ISU president since 2001; before that, he was dean of the Eberly College of Science at Penn State, and before that, he was head of the chemistry department here.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: College of Agricultural Sciences, Penn State alumni, Penn State faculty. Tags: college presidents, Gregory Geoffrey, Iowa State University, Steven Leath.