ENMU AD search on track

PORTALES — Now well into the second week of August, there is still no new athletic director at Eastern New Mexico University.

But, that is to be expected. The search is proceeding just about how university president Jeff Elwell thought it would in late June when Greg Waggoner resigned from the position, setting in motion the quest to find his replacement.

Saturday afternoon, Elwell said the application process was complete, and that Eastern’s nine-person search committee ended up with a final pool of 38 coast-to-coast candidates. According to Elwell, eight of that pool are sitting athletic directors at other schools, and roughly a dozen have been athletic directors previously, with many now serving as the No. 2 person at larger schools.

Elwell says he had asked the committee to whittle the field to eight or nine after conducting telephone and Skype interviews this past week.

The committee will meet on Monday to discuss those interviews, and Elwell expects that by Monday night or Tuesday morning he will hear the results of those discussions and recommendations for four-to-six finalists to bring on campus for in-person interviews.

Elwell will then review the profiles and résumés and decide whether or not to approve inviting the recommended candidates to visit for interviews. Once he signs off on them, Elwell is hoping to bring in some candidates “one after another” the week of Aug. 19 and the rest of them the following week. “And we hope to have an offer out by the 31st of August,” he said.

The key word there is ‘hope’ because a lot depends on how easily it will be to get the finalists into Portales for their interviews. Some will come from great distances.

“The pool is truly national,” Elwell said. “It spanned from Hawaii up to Alaska to the East coast. ... It’s obviously easier to get someone who lives in Texas or Colorado here than somebody who lives in New Hampshire.”

Then there’s that four-to-six-person range that Elwell requested. If it’s four than he thinks they can likely be brought in over a six-day period. If it’s six then it would probably be about a nine-day span. Elwell says the candidates are expected to come into town the night before their interviews, have dinner with him, then go through “a full day of interviews the next day.”

So, the selection is getting nearer. In the meantime, Vice President of Student Affairs Jeff Long continues to serve as interim athletic director, which he has been doing since Waggoner’s resignation.

As for when the new athletic director will actually be in place, Elwell reiterated what he said in late June.

“We hope that we would have somebody signed by the first home football game on Sept. 7,” Elwell said, “and if they might not be starting work yet, we might bring them in, introduce them to the community, and have them attend that game.”

The selection committee consists of two community members, with the other seven deeply involved in ENMU athletics — Greyhound booster club president Glenn Johnson, a former Eastern football assistant and Portales High head football coach; ENMU’s head football coach Kelley Lee; head women’s basketball coach Josh Prock; head trainer Lora Ferguson; head softball coach Kira Zeiter; head track and field coach Jeff Kavalunas; and assistant women’s basketball coach Durmon Jennings.

Their progress so far has a thumbs-up from Elwell.

“I’m delighted,” he said. “The search committee has done a great job. And I’m delighted with the response to our advertisement, and I think we’re going to get a group of very strong candidates to campus.”