Now that Colette Peters is running the federal prison systems, Gov. Kate Brown appointed Heidi Steward as acting director of the Oregon Department of Corrections. Steward, a 23-year employee of DOC, has been deputy director since April 2019. Brown, who leaves office in January, currently has no plans to appoint a permanent director.

Oregon is losing two well-respected presidents from its public universities. University of Oregon President Michael Schill is headed to Evanston, Illinois, this fall to lead Northwestern University. (Rebecca Blank, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had been chosen as president but announced in July that she had an aggressive cancer and could not fulfill the role.) Tom Insko, president of Eastern Oregon University, will become president/CEO of Collins, a wood products company based in Wilsonville, on Oct. 1. This week the EOU Board of Trustees held off on naming an interim president.

Transitions continue in the office of Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis. With Tony Lapiz coming over from the governor’s staff to serve as legislative director, Kristina Narayan has moved to senior adviser. She will work through September, assisting in that transition and on such issues as health care. Alicia Temple joins the office on Aug. 15 as lead policy adviser. She most recently was a legislative advocate at the Oregon Law Center, working on health care, human services and other issues affecting low-income communities. Current policy adviser Annalise Dolph will work through September.

Rayfield also is recruiting a deputy legislative director to replace Ryann Gleason, who left in May, and a communications-oriented legislative affairs specialist for the 2023 legislative session.

The new judges on the Lane County Circuit Court are civil litigators Michelle Bassi and Beatrice Grace. Gov. Brown appointed them to replace Judge Charles Carlson, Position 2, and Judge Lauren Holland, Position 11. Rep. Marty Wilde, D-Eugene, had been angling for the appointment, including shedding his legislative committee assignments. Last month Wilde filed to run for judicial Position 11 in the November election.

Fred Boss, who retired in December as the state’s deputy attorney general, is executive director of the Oregon Commission on Statewide Law Enforcement Standards of Conduct and Discipline.