If all goes as planned tomorrow, the trustees of the Johns Hopkins University will name Dr. William R. Brody, a 52-year-old biomedical engineer, entrepreneur and former Hopkins department chairman, as president.
The move will end the 15-month odyssey to determine who would guide the campus into the 21st century.
Dr. Brody, currently provost of the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center, will bring a deep knowledge of health care administration to Hopkins at a time when the East Baltimore medical campus is changing the way it is financed and operated.
Colleagues said Dr. Brody gained insight into the issues facing the non-medical side of the university while chairman of radiology at Hopkins from 1987 to 1994. Dr. Brody also led a strategic planning committee, which devised 23 recommendations for the university.
"I've not had the experience of seeing a man with the strategic vision that he had," said Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, who now holds the radiology department chairmanship and endowed professorship once occupied by Dr. Brody. "Wherever I went, he always seemed to leave a trail of excellence."
Faculty members said they were excited by the choice, and also relieved: The university lacks a permanent provost, medical school dean and medical chancellor, so naming the next president offers a sense of stability during a time of transition.
University trustee chairman Morris W. Offit, who led the search panel that sifted through candidates, said the costs and technology involved with higher education would force change in the nation's campuses. And Dr. Brody, who led a controversial plan to overhaul the Minnesota health center, has the right perspective to lead fundamental change, Mr. Offit said.
"He's a guy for all seasons for Hopkins," Mr. Offit said yesterday. In an interview, Mr. Offit confirmed the disclosures by three other senior Hopkins officials who said Dr. Brody would be the university's 13th president.
Dr. Brody left Baltimore in the summer of 1994 to take the position in the Twin Cities, where he oversees a $750 million center with 5,000 students, 14,600 faculty members and staff, seven professional schools, and a hospital and health system.
In Hopkins, Dr. Brody will command the nation's largest research university, with 16,000 students, a $1.5 billion operating budget, XTC 22,000 faculty members and staff, eight schools, the Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard County, and a health division that includes two health systems.
