Quick facts about the search
It started four months ago. It is a closed search, so the names of candidates are not released. The presidential search committee will recommend their top two or three finalists to the Board of Trustees. So far the board has narrowed down the pool of 22 candidates to five. President Jo Ann Gora will officially retire at the end of June 2014. Gora has been the president since 2004.• The top two presidential candidates are expected to be recommended to the Board of Trustees during the last week of April, likely to not be disclosed to the public.
• The presidential search committee is conducting interviews for its top five candidates.
• The finalists will likely be invited to campus and have another interview with the Board of Trustees.
Wayne Estopinal, Board of Trustee member on the search committee, said they are doing background checks and calling references before setting up interviews with the five current candidates.
Each interview is scheduled to last a couple hours, he said.
Estopinal said the Board of Trustees will likely hold its interviews for the finalists and find a time to have the candidates on campus afterward.
“Certainly, somebody that is making a very important decision in their career — like becoming the president of our university — we want them to come to campus,” he said. “... As Dr. Gora demonstrates every day, this is an all-in job. So we want them very, very comfortable with their setting. We’d also like them to meet a few of the people that they could potentially be working with.”
He said the search would most likely remain confidential at that point, as long as there are multiple candidates who have concerns about having their information publicized.
“I think, given the realities of today and how quickly names spread and things of that nature, I think the candidates probably, even more today than 10 years ago, appreciate that this is a closed search,” he said.
Estopinal was involved in the committee that helped select Gora in 2004, the first time the university used a closed search. While the committee received negative feedback from the university 10 years ago, Estopinal said he hasn’t run into any backlash this year.
Gora visited campus anonymously in 2004 before she was announced as the new president of the university. She attended a women’s basketball reception at the Alumni Center.
“We acted like lost parents checking out a college campus for an aspiring college student,” Gora said to the Daily News in 2004. “And we didn’t eat any of the [banquet’s] food because we had not been invited.”
Estopinal said Gora was a great outcome of a closed search.
“Jo Ann has done, and continues to do, an incredible job for the university,” he said. “She hasn’t taken her foot off the gas one minute since she announced her retirement. So we can only hope that we can find someone of her dynamic personality and her commitment.”
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