Ottawa University trustees have selected a familiar name to lead the university at least for the next year.

Fred Zook will be interim president beginning Aug. 1, the university announced this week.

He is a former dean of students and faculty member at the Ottawa campus and was provost from 1981 to 2001 at OU’s Arizona campuses. Zook, 68, is a also a former Ottawa City Council member and mayor.

He will lead the university after Fred Snow, who started in 2006, decided to leave OU to pursue developing an international institution, said Patti B. Wolf, chairwoman of the university’s board of trustees.

“They’ve made it very clear that I’m not a caretaker,” Zook said while on vacation in Colorado. “They want me to move ahead as if I’m the president.”

The university is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. It includes the residential campus in Ottawa and adult campuses across the country, including in the Kansas City area and in Arizona, Wisconsin and Indiana. It also operates multiple international instructional sites. Provosts run local campuses.

Zook said he planned to work with administrators early on to brainstorm ideas and make assessments.

“If you work on them together, you’ll get a lot better results,” he said.

Zook and his wife, Connie, will live at the Granger House in Ottawa when in town, but he will travel to visit other OU sites and meet with alumni.

Zook said he will not be a candidate for the permanent position. Wolf said the board has not yet put together a search team but that Zook will likely make an assessment for the board before it moves forward.

“He’s a trusted leader who will bring an atmosphere of collegiality and spirit, and he will create an environment so that our existing leadership of the institution can achieve its goals,” Wolf said.