On Thursday, Oct. 16, the presidential search committee met to discuss the results of their Skype interviews with the quarter finalists for the new Trinity University president. They have now pared down the number even further to what they are calling the semi finalists. However, the number of candidates is not allowed to be released.
The search committee will now be moving forward by having longer meetings with each candidate and making reference calls.
“I am really looking forward to this series of interviews that we are about to have,” said Adam Urbach, chair of the faculty senate. “We have already met all of them in short Skype interviews…Now we are going to have longer interviews with them before bringing the finalists to campus.”
These off-site interviews will take place at the end of the month. After that series of interviews, three candidates will be brought to campus. These visits are tentatively scheduled to be Nov. 13 – 21, but cannot be firmly planned since the candidates have not yet been selected.
“They’ll have two days jammed packed with different constituencies, open forums, campus tours, meeting everyone they need to meet, and students, faculty and staff will have an opportunity to interact with them there,” said Evan Lewis, Student Government Association president.
“We want feedback from the campus, which will help us to make the case for the candidates,” Urbach said.
After these visits, the search committee will make a “pro and con” list of each candidate. Their recommendations will then be forwarded to the Board of Trustees which will make the final hiring decision.
However, the new president will not be on campus until this summer.
“While we would hope to have a signature on paper by the first of the year…the fact is that the people we are looking at are usually highly placed in other institutions,” Lewis said. “They have other obligations…we wouldn’t want a candidate to jump ship halfway through the year without giving their university adequate time to respond to their moving on.”
