List of presidential candidates to be narrowed

BY: KYLE WOOSLEY
kyle_woosley3@mymail.eku.edu

The President Search and Screening Committee plans to narrow down list of candidates for Eastern’s next president at its scheduled meeting Feb. 20.

Craig Turner, chair of the President Search and Screening Committee, said they plan to evaluate all of the applicants and nominations at the meeting.

“There’s a lot of work for the committee to do before now and Feb. 20 to work diligently through this process,” Turner said.

At this time, Turner says they plan to shorten the list of potential candidates.

“The bulk of the applicants will be to us to review and evaluate before the first meeting in February,” Turner said. “We have kind of a rating system we’ve all agreed upon to reduce the applicant pool to eight to 10 people.”

The committee plans to have the applicant pool reduced by March 8.

Turner said several advertisements have been placed in “large metropolitan newspapers and higher education chronicles.”

“The activity is increasing,” Turner said. “We have received a lot of nominations and inquiries.”
When the committee receives a nomination, Turner said they give the information to Academic Search, which is the official firm for the presidential search.

“They follow up and see if that person would want to apply and get them in,” Turner said.
Although the applicants will not be officially disclosed during the course of the search, Turner is excited to see the pool of candidates.

“All indications look like we’re going to have a good, strong pool,” Turner said. “I’m as interested as everybody to see what the pool looks like.”

Because of the personnel content of the meeting, Turner says the Feb. 20 meeting will most likely be a closed session.

“This meeting is a stepping stone for us to start having some interviews at the end of the first week of March,” Turner said. “It will be a long day, which we will do nothing but review and rank candidates in private.”

Once the committee narrows down the applicants, they will begin scheduled on-campus interviews for the official candidates.

“The first kind of weeks of April, we’re determined as on-campus interviews,” Turner said. “This schedule will be dependent on a lot of different variables, but somewhere between April 1 and 12.”

Following on-campus interviews, the Board of Regents will meet to review the candidates in mid-April.
The committee is aiming to officially name a new president of Eastern by April 15.

“I think the search process is right on track,” Turner said. “I have been very pleased with Academic Search for their guidance. We’ve done the right thing to get started and I don’t expect to end any differently.”

For more information on Eastern’s presidential search, visit www.presidentialsearch.eku.edu