The chair of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee said the Board of Trustees’ decision to hire a national search firm could cost Eastern as much as $65,000.

BOT member Robert Manion, who was chosen by the board to chair the search committee, said Monday in an e-mail, he estimates the fees will be in range of $55,000 to $65,000.

Jeff Cooley, vice president for business affairs, has submitted a formal request for proposals for an executive search firm to aid in the search for the university’s next president. Interested firms can submit proposals until Oct. 19.

The last time Eastern sought a new president, in 1998, the university paid Hiedrick and Struggles, a national search firm, $50,000 to aid in the search. That search culminated in the hiring of Eastern’s eighth president, Carol Surles.

Two faculty members who served on the last presidential search committee agree that while hiring a national search firm is costly, a firm can provide benefits that a campus committee cannot.

Loretta Prater, chair of the School of Family and Consumer Science, who served on the last presidential search committee, said hiring a firm can be beneficial despite the price tag.

“I do, especially at that level,” she said. “I think the price is competitive. It’s driven by the free enterprise system.”

Prater said filling a job as high profile as president of a university can be difficult for a campus committee to do alone because most worthy candidates aren’t surveying want ads, looking for jobs.

Bonnie Irwin, an associate English professor, who served on the last presidential search committee as well, agreed, saying a national firm has connections that a campus committee doesn’t, but those connections do come at a price.

“It’s not just the question of cost; it’s the question of how the search works,” she said. “Search firms, the reason they’re hired, is they have connections all over the country at all different schools.”

Irwin said some potential candidates would rather deal with a search firm because they wouldn’t want to reveal their identities until they are considered finalists for the position. Revealing they are job hunting could damage their reputation with their current employers and even hamper their job performance.

Irwin said, for example, potential candidates might be involved with fund raising at their current employers. If it gets out that the person is job hunting, it could hurt their ability to bring in funds, she said.

Both Irwin and Prater agree that Hiedrick and Struggles aided in the last presidential search.

“I thought it was really very helpful,” Prater said of the firm’s assistance.

Irwin said while it’s hard to say how the search would have resulted if a firm wasn’t hired, Hiedrick and Struggles was helpful.

“It’s undeniable that the search firm did things that we couldn’t have done,” Irwin said.

However, she cautioned that the search committee being formed must ensure that the firm hired assists but does not try to control the search because, while it can offer many resources to process, a firm does not know Eastern’s campus.