PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon has picked Wim Wiewel, a University of Baltimore provost and nationally known urban scholar, was the new president of Portland State University.

"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.

The University of Baltimore, like Portland State, serves mostly older, nontraditional students who have jobs, but has s fifth of Portland State's 25,000 enrollment.

Wiewel will take over a university with an ongoing faculty labor dispute, a low graduation rate, large class sizes and a relatively low $346 million budget. Oregon ranks 45th in the nation for spending per student on higher education.

A major accomplishment during his 25 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago was helping create and direct the university's Great Cities Institute, which carries out hundreds of research, service and teaching programs in Chicago.

During his four years at the University of Baltimore, Wiewel played a major role in creating the Central Baltimore Partnership, an unusual coalition of three universities and numerous city and community organizations focused on revitalizing a low-income and art district.