Stony Brook University held its first interviews for the incoming president last week. 

The presidential search committee selected a number of candidates for the committee to hold “airport interviews” with.

“I can say that I think that we had a really excellent list of candidates,” Judith Greiman, the chief deputy to the president, said at a university senate meeting on Feb. 3. “I think that the interest in Stony Brook is significant.”

According to the SUNY Presidential Search Summary and Timeline, the next step in the search is for the council to recommend three finalist candidates to Chancellor Johnson for consideration. The Chancellor and the SUNY Board of Trustees will then continue with the search process.

The representational search model, as approved by the SUNY Board and requested by the Chancellor, has strict rules of confidentiality. The search committee members will conduct the on-campus interviews, in which the semi-finalists’ names are not publicized.

In terms of the presidential search, Greiman said that candidates so far have been impressed with “where [the university has] come in the time period that we’ve done that,” and by the school’s social mobility numbers.

According to Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility, Stony Brook is ranked among the top 10 colleges and universities in the nation whose students begin college at the bottom fifth of income distribution and then rise to the top three-fifths. 

Greiman added that candidates also find the diverse campus and aspects of Stony Brook’s research portfolio very impressive.

This update follows the Interim President Bernstein’s withdrawal of candidacy from the presidential search. 

According to Greiman, the chancellor’s goal is to vote on the final presidential candidate during the first or second week of May. “It’s a lively and active search … and I think the committee has come together in a good way,” she said. 

A permanent president is expected to take over this summer.

Correction: Feb. 10, 2020

A previous version of this story stated that “after reference and background checks are run on the top five candidates, on-campus interviews will then be conducted, in which the candidates would be released to the public.” However, this is a representational presidential search, in which the SUNY guidelines state that the names of the candidates are not publicized.