Find out who earns the highest salaries at Iowa State
Editor's note: The most recent data from Iowa State University includes salaries from the 2023 Fiscal Year. Some of the highest-earning individuals at Iowa State that year no longer work for the university and were left off this list.
Several athletic coaches, college deans, and the university president are among Iowa State University's top earners.
Iowa State's wealthiest employees were determined by annual pay in a fiscal year or the total amount of money an employee earns before taxes and deductions. The list includes all forms of cash compensation, including bonuses, commissions, overtime pay or allowances.
Here is a list of Iowa State's highest-paid employees from the 2023 Fiscal Year:
Matthew Campbell, football
Matt Campbell is Iowa State's head football coach and has an annual salary of $2.7 million. He is the Big 12's second-longest tenured active coach and just the second in school history to coach 100 games.
Campbell took over as head coach prior to the 2016 season, and now owns the second-best winning percentage in school history. He is entering the 2024 season just four wins shy of breaking the school record of 56 victories.
Thomas Otzelberger, basketball
T.J. Otzelberger is the head men's basketball coach and earns an annual salary of $1.55 million.
Otzelberger returned to Iowa State as head coach in 2021, having previously served as the program's lead recruiter and bench coach, and then its assistant coach for several years.
Otzelberger has led the Cyclones to a 70-35 record and three trips to the NCAA Tournament.
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Jon Heacock, football
Jon Heacock is the defensive coordinator for the Iowa State football team and has an annual salary of a little more than $1 million.
He is in his ninth season as Iowa State's defensive coordinator and has been coaching college football for 39 years.
Bill Fennelly, basketball
Bill Fennelly is the head coach for the Iowa State women's basketball program, earning an annual salary of $860,000.
This upcoming season will be Fennelly's 30th season at Iowa State and 37th as a Division I head coach. He has accumulated more than 750 career victories and averaged over 21 wins per season.
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Jamie Pollard, athletics director
Jamie Pollard is Iowa State's Director of Athletics and has an annual salary of $800,000.
Pollard is the university's longest-tenured AD and the fourth-longest serving active Power Four director. He is entering his 20th year leading the Cyclones’ 18-sport program.
Under Pollard's leadership, Iowa State Athletics has broken ground on the 40-acre CYTown development, launched cable and digital TV network Cyclones.tv, and earned 23 of its 26 all-time academic NCAA Public Recognition Awards in nine different sports.
Wendy Wintersteen, president
Wendy Wintersteen is the university's president and has an annual salary of $668,000. She is the first woman to hold the university’s highest office and is the highest-paid non-athletic employee.
Under Wintersteen's leadership, Iowa State was named the 2023 Entrepreneurial University of the Year for the Americas and ranked among the top 12 undergraduate entrepreneurship programs out of 300 public and private universities by the Princeton Review.
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David Spalding, business
David Spalding is the Raisbeck Endowed Dean of the Ivy College of Business at Iowa State with an annual salary of $508,753.
He also serves as interim senior vice president for operations and finance at Iowa State.
During Spalding's time as dean, total enrollment at the Ivy College of Business grew 36.7 percent from fall 2012 to fall 2023.The college has also added five undergraduate majors and six new master’s programs.
Jonathan Wickert, provost*
During his time as Iowa State's provost, Jonathan Wickert's annual salary was $458,576.
Wickert announced his resignation in January, which was made official on June 30. He stayed at Iowa State as a mechanical engineering professor, President's Chair in Engineering and provost emeritus.
Wickert was one of the nation's longest-serving provosts and the longest-serving provost among Iowa's public universities. He's also the longest-serving provost in the Big 12 Conference.
Iowa State's newest provost Jason Keith was announced on May 21. Keith is the former dean of the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University.
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W. Samuel Easterling, engineering
W. Samuel Easterling is the James L. and Katherine S. Melsa Dean of Engineering at Iowa State and earns an annual salary of $430,737.
Easterling heads the largest college on campus, responsible for more than 9,500 students, 500 faculty and staff, 11 buildings, and multiple research centers and programs.
Easterling is an Iowa State alumnus having received his doctorate in structural engineering in 1987.
James Brown, finance
James Brown is the Debbie and Jerry Ivy Chair in Business and a professor of finance at Iowa State. He pulls in an annual salary of $418,666.
Brown has a B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. in economics and is an expert in topics such as law and finance, financial markets and economic performance, and private equity and entrepreneurial finance.
Brown received the MBA Executive Advisory Council Teaching Excellence Award in 2022 and the Dean's Council Outstanding Achievement in Research in 2020.
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Celia Brocker is a government, crime, political and education reporter for the Ames Tribune. She can be reached at CBrocker@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Who are Iowa State's highest-paid employees?
