PORTLAND (AP) — Oregon has picked Wim Wiewel, a University of Baltimore provost and nationally known urban scholar, to be president of Portland State University on Friday, The Oregonian reported.

Wiewel, the University of Baltimore’s second-highest administrator, was en route for Portland Thursday night and was to be at a  news conference today after his appointment became official.

“I’m very excited about the opportunity that the presidency of Portland State represents,” said Wiewel, 57, in a telephone interview from the Washington, D.C., airport Thursday.

He has devoted most of his academic life to studies on connecting urban universities to their communities.

That makes him “a great match for Portland State, and I know he will have great success there,” said University of Baltimore President Robert L. Bogomolny in a prepared statement.

John E. von Schlegell, a member of Oregon’s State Board of Higher Education, said Wiewel has a “friendly and adaptable style” suited to a university at the “crossroads of what it really wants to be when it grows up.”

Wiewel, he added, “was very optimistic and not willing to accept limitations on where Portland State could go. That is something I wanted to see.”

Rudy Soto, student body president at Portland State, praised Wiewel’s capacity to listen and his grasp of issues on diversity, internationalism and research.

“Before talking about himself, he wanted to know about the students,” Soto said.