The Binghamton University Council is in the process of appointing a search committee to participate in the hiring of President Lois DeFleur’s successor.

The Council, which is charged with running the presidential search, is made up of 10 members: nine governor-appointed members and one student-elected student representative.

Matt Allwood, vice president for finance of the Student Association, is the student representative who acts as the voice for both the undergraduate and graduate students.

Currently, the Council is working on assembling the members of the presidential search committee by following a set of SUNY guidelines.

According to Kathryn Grant Madigan, chair of the BU Council, the committee will ultimately consist of four members of the BU Council, including herself, six faculty members to be chosen by ballot, at least one doctoral research faculty member, one alum, one academic dean, one professional or support staff representative, one undergraduate student and one doctoral student.

The committee will also utilize the help of someone who will not have a vote — called the chancellor’s liaison — and a campus liaison, who is the administrative assistant to the BU Council.

“We really hope to have the committee formed within the next couple of weeks … Our inaugural meeting is in March,” Madigan said, adding that an exact date is still up in the air.

The council is also working on hiring a search firm to narrow down the applicant pool.

“The search firm is a company that takes all of the applications and basically whittles them down to the 20 best,” Allwood said. “They then give these 20 to the search committee, who will narrow it further.”

Madigan said the council has already started researching the search firms. They have identified about five or six firms who they believe have the ability to conduct a high-level presidential search. The vetting process is in progress, but again, no exact time line has been determined.

“We start seriously vetting the applicants after the top 20 are selected,” Madigan said. “It is a highly confidential stage of the search, as we will be getting provosts and presidents from other universities that we have to guarantee confidentiality to at this point.”

After the firm takes part in scouting and narrowing down the applicant pool, the search committee steps in to take the pool down to a dozen.

Once the applicants have been narrowed to 12, a series of in-depth interviews occur to take the group to five, then three and then eventually the chancellor will nominate one, based on interviews and recommendations from the committee, to bring to the SUNY board of trustees, where they will either accept or deny the candidate.

The council hopes to name the successor by the time DeFleur steps down in July, with the final five arriving at BU for their last interviews before or shortly after commencement.

According to Allwood and Madigan, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher may need to appoint an interim president in the event that the process is still continuing in July or the chosen candidate is not able to start until after the fall semester has begun.

Madigan is currently working on a Web site with Katie Ellis, director of communications and marketing at BU, that is scheduled to launch in the next couple of weeks.

The University community will be able to use the site to see how things are progressing, look at guidelines and provide feedback.

“It’s really about making sure people are aware of what’s going on. We want to collect as much input as possible,” Madigan said. “This is a big deal not just for the University but for the entire community.”