’IDEAL’ CHOICE: Ortolano. Linda Cicero/News Service

At work as the interim director of the Haas Center for Public Service, Leonard Ortolano hadn’t even applied for the permanent position. But after 10 months of a nationwide search, the selection committee decided “our ideal candidate was already among us,” says co-chair Julie Lythcott-Haims, ’89, the dean of freshman and transfer students. Now Ortolano has been named to lead the center, which is home to more than 40 student service organizations and many other service programs involving staff, faculty and community members.

Ortolano, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, is a specialist in water resources whose recent research includes projects in India and China. As director of the program on urban studies from 1980 to 2003, Ortolano worked with the Haas Center to introduce a community organization track in the urban studies major and the Urban Summer Fellowships. He succeeds Nadinne Cruz, who left the center in June 2003.