None of the three presidential candidates who visited campus in February were chosen as the next president of Lakeland College, according to Reverend David Michael, spokesperson for the Presidential Search Committee (PSC).

The Lakeland website released a statement from Michael on March 23 in which he said questionnaire responses completed by staff, faculty, student leaders, and alumni were crucial in the PSC’s “decision to exclude two of the prospective candidates from further consideration; the third candidate chose to withdraw his/her name from further consideration.”

Michael said he could not disclose which candidate withdrew and which candidates were excluded or whether the decision to exclude candidates was unanimous.

Illinois Wesleyan University announced Jonathan Green, one of the three candidates who visited Lakeland in late February, as their new provost and dean in a March 21 press release. Michael said it is common for candidates to apply at more than one school.

“The committee’s work which involves individuals like the two that were not chosen carries with it a certain responsibility for confidentiality so I really can’t talk about whether it was unanimous or not,” Michael said. “I can simply say that the committee as a whole did not feel that they were ready to present either of those to the trustees as the candidate of choice.

“Primarily our conclusion was that they didn’t seem like a good fit with Lakeland. That’s really the simplest way I can put it. Even after considering their experience and the way in which they responded in the conversations they had with both the committee and the faculty and staff, we came to the conclusion that neither one was a good fit for Lakeland,” Michael said.

Michael said the PSC hopes to bring new candidates to campus before summer.

The PSC met March 25 and decided to continue using the search firm it hired when it first met last July. The firm, AGB search, a consultant associated with the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities, costs $90 thousand from the beginning of a search until the search ends.

“The committee has worked long and hard,” Michael said. “There is disappointment that we haven’t done better at finding the right candidate up to this point, but everyone is determined and committed to moving ahead with it. But we always knew that we might work and might discover candidates that we wanted to expose to the campus and that they wouldn’t be the ones we were finally going to end up with. We know that our job continues until we find the right candidates.”

President Stephen Gould said he is not sure how long he will stay on as Lakeland’s president if a replacement is not chosen by his scheduled retirement on July 1.

“I don’t know how long,” Gould said. “There’s certainly a limit in here someplace. I’m certainly willing to stay through the summer. I hope it doesn’t come to being asked to serve any longer, but we’ll see.

“The selection of a president is probably the most important decision a board makes. It’s a difficult thing for a school to deal with when the board gets it wrong. There are instances of presidents who don’t last a year or don’t last two years and then you’re back in this time-consuming, tension-producing process all over again.”