Michael Lovell Credit: Mike De Sisti

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UPDATE: Read more about Marquette's official announcement Wednesday

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Michael Lovell is expected to be named the next president of Marquette University on Wednesday — the first layman to be president in the Jesuit university's 132-year history, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has learned.

Lovell will replace Father Scott R. Pilarz, who unexpectedly announced his resignation in September after two years on the job. Interim President Father Robert Wild will remain in the role until Lovell assumes the new position.

A 2011 change in school bylaws made it possible for a layperson to be selected as long as the person was Catholic.

Lovell, who couldn't be reached, is a devout Catholic. He and his wife of 20 years were college sweethearts at the University of Pittsburgh. Their first date was at the campus Catholic Newman Club.

In an interview before he was inaugurated at UWM, Amy Lovell described her husband as a man of faith and a proud Catholic.

"He prays a lot for the university and for the wisdom to lead," she said.

Lovell's departure from UWM is likely to come as a big shock. He is the sixth chancellor within the past year to either be replaced or to announce he is leaving the UW System. There are 13 chancellors in the UW System.

Lovell, who became UWM's eighth chancellor in fall 2011, told the Journal Sentinel on Feb. 25 that he did not apply for the Marquette job and had not talked to the executive search firm hired by Marquette.

"I'm not part of the process," he said at the time. "No one is trying to twist my arm to go to Marquette. UWM is a great institution and I'm very proud to represent it."

Filling the presidency will allow Marquette to move forward on filling a number of other key leadership positions, including provost, athletic director and director of admissions.

John Ferraro, president of the presidential search committee and a member of the Marquette Board of Trustees, said Saturday that "it has been our plan all along" to have the next president spearhead the searches for a new athletic director and provost.

Marquette also is looking to hire a new basketball coach to replace Buzz Williams, who accepted a coaching job last week at Virginia Tech.

"We have the utmost confidence that Marquette will hire an excellent coach who will continue our longstanding tradition of our elite-level men's basketball program," Ferraro said Saturday.

Wednesday's expected announcement comes sooner than the university's original timeline for filling the presidency. A university spokesman declined Tuesday night to comment on the search.

It's no secret that Lovell was distressed a year ago, when state lawmakers punished the UW System after a report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau revealed the UW System had $648 million in cash balances at the the end of the previous fiscal year.

State lawmakers accused university officials of not being forthright about how they were spending taxpayer money, and withheld additional funding that Gov. Scott Walker had proposed. State lawmakers also withheld flexibilities promised to campuses.

In a letter to UWM faculty, staff and students last April, Lovell said he wanted to make it clear that UWM did not have a large, uncommitted cash balance.

UWM's cash balances were largely committed to academic initiatives to enhance student success, support research and expand economic development within the state, he said.

Cash balances at UWM as of June 30, 2012, totaled $92 million, representing 13% of the university's total revenue for fiscal year 2011-2012.

That fell short of the cash balance level of 40% recommended by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, a membership organization dedicated to advancing business practices and economic vitality of higher education institutions, Lovell pointed out.

Lovell didn't take the typical path to the top at UWM; he wasn't a vice chancellor or provost first. He quickly jumped from the classroom to the chancellor's office after being hired in 2008 as dean of the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences and a professor of mechanical engineering.

Lovell brought the systematic, process-oriented thinking of an engineer to the chancellor's job, which he held on an interim basis for seven months before being appointed permanently by the UW Board of Regents in May 2011.

He also brought a distance runner's patience, diligence and energy to the job, according to colleagues.

The university credits Lovell with continuing to push forward several construction initiatives, including its 89-acre Innovation Campus in Wauwatosa, the $53 million expansion of the School of Freshwater Sciences on the Milwaukee inner harbor and the first phase of the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, the first new all-academic building to be constructed on the UWM main campus in nearly two decades.

The school also says Lovell has created or strengthened partnerships with many Milwaukee-area corporations.

He served on the board of The Water Council and supported the university's participation in the Global Water Center and is chairman emeritus of the Mid-West Energy Research Consortium, which has grown to have corporate and academic representatives from seven states who are united in their desire to make the region the U.S. leader in energy, power and control.

He is involved with several Greater Milwaukee Committee initiatives including MiKE and Scale Up Milwaukee.

He is a co-chair of Milwaukee Succeeds, a collaboration that aims to improve educational outcomes for children in Milwaukee.

Before joining UWM, Lovell served as associate dean for research at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering for five years and was a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Kentucky, after starting his career at ANSYS, a firm that develops engineering simulation software.

Lovell holds three academic degrees in mechanical engineering, including a PhD, from the University of Pittsburgh.

On the eve of his inauguration as UWM chancellor, Lovell expressed high hopes for the university.

His vision for UWM was that it would no longer be known as a local commuter school. Intead, it would be an international research institution that fuels economic growth, helps solve the region's problems and boosts the number of college graduates in Wisconsin.

Lovell called for fundamental changes in campus culture, including giving students more activities on campus.

He began requiring most freshmen to live on campus to increase their chances of graduating, starting in 2012, and set a goal of requiring sophomores to live on campus within three to five years, once more residence halls could be built to add about 1,000 beds.

"We're not the plain commuter college we were 30 years ago," Lovell said at the time. "We're a vibrant international university. And we're becoming a more traditional university with a campus life."