A little more than a month after starting its search Iowa State University has a new leader for its athletic department. ISU president Dr.Gregory Geoffroy introduced Jamie Pollard as the new AD. The 40-year-old Pollard has spent the past two years as deputy A-D at Wisconsin where he worked with football coach and athletic director Barry Alvarez. Iowa State’s search committee conducted interviews off campus but Pollard and his family decided to visit Ames on their own over Labor Day Weekend. He says they decided they wanted to go and see what Ames was like, so if he took the job they would know what the town was like.Pollard takes over an ISU program that has one of the smallest budgets in the Big-12 Conference. He says that’s alright, as 15 years ago Wisconsin had one of the lowest budgets. He says it’s not daunting because he believes the foundation has been laid for improvement. Geoffroy says three finalists were selected from a list of more than 100 candidates and they wanted to keep the process confidential because they didn’t want to jeopardize their jobs. And he says they didn’t want to tip off the universities so they would try and keep the candidates.The search committee worked with the Baker-Parker search firm and Geoffroy says that helped keep the process move quickly.Pollard replaces Bruce Van De Velde who resigned in early August.