Eastern’s Board of Trustees will wait to restart the search for a new president because interim President Lou Hencken agreed to a two-year contract extension.

Board member Robert Manion, search committee chair, said in an e-mail Friday the search would not begin until 2003.

Blair Lord, vice president for academic affairs, confirmed Manion’s statement, telling The Daily Eastern News Friday that the search may not begin until March, April or even May of that year.

The search for Eastern’s ninth leader ended unsuccessfully last April when one of the three finalists rejected an offer from Eastern, putting the board in an awkward position to find a president by July 31 when Hencken’s contract expired.

The finalist, John Cavanaugh, then the vice president for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, has since signed on as president of West Florida University.

According to the board, the other two finalists were not a proper fit for Eastern, leading to Hencken’s contract extension.

Now the search will start over, which was expected to happen sometime this year, according to reports from a Presidential Search Advisory Committee meeting in April.

Lord said the search firm that failed last year, Academic Search, will perform this search, so the university will not pay any more money and the search will be done in the same manner.

Currently, the committee is reviewing the position advertisement.

Once the advertisement is posted, the committee will let applications pile up for two weeks, according to the April meeting.

Manion said in April the committee would also review the 48 other eligible applications received in January when the search began. The committee had received 51 applications in January.

Once applications have been reviewed, the committee will conduct off-campus interviews to narrow down the field to three finalists, who will then visit Eastern’s campus for interviews.

Also, all of the committee members have agreed to remain on the search.

Marty Ruhaak, vice president for public affairs, will replace former student board member Daryl Jones on the committee.

The other student member, Katie Cox, who graduated in May, said she spoke with the Student Senate on the event the search would exceed her days at Eastern and expected the Senate would appoint Student Body President Alison Mormino to the search committee.

An appointment to replace Cox has not yet been made.