Now it’s all in the hands of University President Michael Adams.

“I’m going to have to go sit in a closet somewhere and try to sort it all out and make a decision,” Adams said last week. “They’re all strong candidates, and it probably won’t be an easy decision.”

Adams plans to decide who will become the next provost by the end of the month.

On Tuesday, provost candidate Sallie Keller-McNulty had some new ideas about how classes at the University might look in the future.

“Technology could be playing new and inventive roles in the delivery of some of what we’re doing in our education,” Keller-McNulty said in an open forum with the University community in the Chapel.

Keller-McNulty, who serves as the William and Stephanie Sick Dean for the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University, said innovation, creativity and new ideas should guide the University in its future endeavors.

“Students are growing up very differently than how we grew up – with Twitter and Facebook,” she said. “I went to a Facebook workshop just to try to understand how we can better use that within our organization.”

And faculty must continually think about how they can influence students.

“[Students] really want to change the world,” she said. “They are challenging us as faculty to deliver to them an education such that they can figure out how to do that. This has challenged my thinking – what are we doing and how are we delivering this education? How are we preparing them to change the world?”

But the University must also provide faculty the support they need.

“What a university owes the faculty is a really strong and healthy intellectual environment,” she said.

This could be created by eliminating bureaucratic barriers to faculty achievement, and by encouraging an exchange of creative ideas.

The University must also support the faculty by providing them a strong circle of coworkers, she said.

“[The University] owes the faculty good colleagues,” Keller-McNulty said, “which means that we have to try to be doing our best to provide what we can to attract new talent.”

But hiring new faculty takes money – and Keller-McNulty is not willing to hire until enough money is available to provide the new faculty full support.

“I think it’s critically important that we do not short change the faculty coming in,” she said. “I think that’s one of the worst decisions an institution can make.”

Faculty starting up without the proper funds would take longer to begin contributing to the University and actually drain resources in the future, she said.

And she said the future of the University depends on making effective hiring decisions.

“It’s just really important that we get it right,” she said. “It’s important that we reach out to get the broadest and most diverse pools that we can, and it’s important that we don’t compromise standards, even if it means not hiring for a few years in a row because we couldn’t find the right person.”

Keller-McNulty is the final provost candidate to visit campus. The University will announce the new provost sometime this month, and members of the University community are invited to submit their comments about the four contenders to the Search Advisory Committee before Sept. 3.