Robert Augustine, dean of the Graduate School, will chair the search committee for the vice president of business affairs.

Jeff Cooley, current vice president of business affairs, announced on June 10 he would retire on Dec. 31.

Cooley has worked at Eastern for 25 years starting as the director of internal auditing before being promoted to assistant vice president in 1997 and then appointed to vice president for business affairs in 2001.

“He can’t be replaced and his shoes will not be fill-able, but we will have someone to follow in that position,” said President Bill Perry.

The rest of the search committee has yet to be formed.

Once school started, Perry asked chairs from different committees to suggest lists of names to be on the search committee.

Those governing bodies include Student Senate, Staff Senate and Faculty Senate.

Perry said he should have the rest of the names by the end of this week. Once the names are in, the committee will be formed and will begin to meet.

“We’ll move at all due speed,” Perry said. “But we’re going to conduct a deliberate, thoughtful search so that we get the best person possible to succeed Mr. Cooley.”

Augustine is expecting to have the first meeting with the committee by the end of September.

The committee will then review and update the job description before setting up a recruitment plan, which would include where the committee plans to advertise and how they plan to get interested candidates, Augustine added.

“As soon as all of that is approved then we’ll get our advertising up, and we’ll start accepting applications,” he said.

At this point, Augustine said the goal of the committee is not to try and fill the position by the time of Cooley’s retirement.

“I think we’re hoping to do a national search and have someone in place sometime in this academic year but not necessarily by the time of Cooley’s retirement,” Augustine said. “Our primary goal is to attract the best available candidates, and we’re going to do that very strategically and take our time to do it well.”

Augustine said he doesn’t want to put the committee into that kind of short timeline.

“We want to ensure that we have gotten the information out to the broadest audience and ensure that we attract the best applicants for the position,” he said. “I think it will be our goal that we ensure we have a strong applicant pool first rather than try to achieve an appointment by Mr. Cooley’s retirement deadline.”

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.