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The University of New Mexico has had nine presidents since 1975, including its new president, David J. Schmidly. Most served four years or less - some barely a year. Only two presidents - Bud Davis and Richard Peck - served more than seven years apiece. At 63, Schmidly hopes to join them on what he calls his "last rodeo."

UNM needs leadership continuity. And Schmidly has a good start. In other presidential searches, the Board of Regents botched the process. And while we've had some good presidents in the last 32 years, a cloud has hung over most of them.

The regents this time conducted an open and intelligent search. And what a relief. They chose a professional college president, a likable man who helped raise nearly $850 million as president at Oklahoma State and one whose scholarship as a well-published zoologist no one can question.

I've interviewed all but one president since 1975. I met President Schmidly with some trepidation, based on past experience. And I'd heard the grumbling around town and on campus about his hiring of basketball volcano Bobby Knight at Texas Tech.

It's way too early to predict, I know, but what I found heartened me greatly. I found a man who believes in education, who was transformed himself by early teachers, who believes, as he says, that "students come first," who is appalled by UNM's miserable overall graduation rate and will devote himself to fixing it, who is a passionate advocate of cultural diversity, an active scholar still conducting research and writing books, an idealist about reading and life-long learning, a pragmatist about leadership and a president who's not interested in having any isolated part of the university be the "tail that wags the dog" - especially athletics. I really couldn't ask for more.

We'll hear a lot about Schmidly's goals for the university in the future, because he communicates pretty much endlessly, by e-mail and other means, with the university community and the world it serves. He believes in transparency, working immediately to build a statistical Web site so any legislator or citizen can see how UNM is doing.

Schmidly has built a "leadership team" that will leave no major part of the university as an isolated entity, including the Athletics Department, whose director has been made a vice president - not to elevate his role but to include him as a formal player in university governance.

It's Schmidly's inclusiveness that heartens me most. A zoologist who's also an interdisciplinary scholar and author of natural histories, he sees UNM's distinctive position as the most culturally diverse student population in the United States as as "potentially one of the greatest learning environments."

His interest in undergraduate scholarship, research excellence, honors education, university presses, building great libraries and enhancing and using UNM's already excellent archives gives me high hopes for the future.