On Tuesday, April 11, the Southeastern Louisiana University Presidential Search Committee met in Baton Rouge to review presidential applications and select semi-finalists for on-campus interviews.

The committee began its work at 11 a.m. and called the roll; every member of the board was in attendance for deliberations. The board then went to another room to discuss all the potential candidates in a private executive session.

After about two hours of deliberation, they came back with five semi-finalists. The final candidate list for the future president of Southeastern was narrowed down to Joseph Odenwald, Mary Parker, Eric Summers, Sebastian van Delden and William Wainwright. All other candidates were removed from contention.

Looking ahead, on-campus interviews will be held on April 17 and 18 for the Southeastern community to speak to the candidates directly. Interviews will be hosted by the board and each candidate will have equal time to speak to the attendees. There will be different interviews throughout the days, each one for one of four different audiences. Schedules for all interviews can be found here. Once all interviews have been conducted on Tuesday, the board will decide at least two finalists.

The board has also decided to push up its timetable. Originally, the final meeting to decide on a president was at the beginning of May, but the board will now meet on April 27 in Baton Rouge to decide the next president. 

All information about these upcoming events, along with candidate applications, can be found on the University of Louisiana School System’s website.