BEND, OR -- Central Oregon Community College's President will retire at the end of this school year, and the school's Board of Directors is on the hunt for a new leader. Board Chair John Mundy says they received 55 applications. "We're looking at half of them as having the qualifications that we really want, some of those candidates are very well qualified and very strong."

While it's still months before Dr. Shirley Metcalf retires, Mundy says the selection committee had to start the process early to attract the best candidates, "The later you wait, the more folks are being picked up by other colleges," he tells KBND News, "So our strategy from the very beginning was to move quickly in order to reach the point where we're interviewing that final candidate before anyone else has the opportunity to interview them." That committee is made up of faculty, classified staff, a student and community members. The group is currently reviewing applications and are expected to narrow the field down to 12 or 15, by Monday, "We want to make sure that everybody on the committee has a voice in choosing the set of candidates we move forward in the process."

Those top candidates will be interviewed via Skype throughout January. Then, Mundy says, "Based on the results of those interviews, we're going to recommend three or four semifinalists who we're going to invite to the college for a more intensive round of interviews. And hopefully, based on those interviews, where we bring the candidates to town, we'll be able to finalize one candidate that we really, really like." The goal is to have a new President named by the March Board of Directors meeting.