The hiring process to find a replacement for President Dena Maloney, who will be leaving El Camino at the end of the year, has narrowed its search to a diverse pool of candidates.

PPL Inc., a company that specializes in placing potential educational executives at California community colleges, was tasked with putting together the search committee to evaluate those candidates.

PPL’s President, Benjamin T. Duran, and Vice President, Lisa Sugimoto said they were very proud of the hard work and dedication put forth by the search committee to find a wide, diverse and qualified range of candidates which followed the guidelines set out in Administrative Procedure 2431.

“79% of the candidates self-declared themselves as people of color. 57% are women. 50% are women of color. 28% came from out of state,” Duran said. “We were really, really delighted with the diversity of the pool, and not only is it a very diverse pool, it’s a very strong pool.”

Out of the 39 applicants, 33 candidates met the minimum qualification for the position and advanced through to be reviewed and screened by the search committee on Feb. 8.

The search committee evaluated and assigned scores to all 33 candidates. Between Feb. 8 and March 2 the committee submitted those scores electronically to ECC’s Human Resources department, who then worked with the committee to select potential interviewees on March 3.

Jane Miyashiro, the Vice President of Human Resources at El Camino, said the search committee had done tremendous work to bring “some incredible individuals to the table.”

“I think that because the entire pool was very diverse, that the individuals that rose to the top were certainly well-qualified,” Miyashiro said. “So to have this diversity in the interviewees is just a real benefit to the college.”

During Monday’s ECC Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting, the committee informed the board that they had arrived at 11 interviewees and three alternates, in case any of the interviewees became unavailable.

The work of the committee will culminate on the week of March 29 to April 1, when they will present three to five finalists to the BOT to be interviewed during a closed session. Duran added that the closed session was to ensure that no sensitive information of the candidates would be shared publicly.

The BOT will finalize its decision on the finalists and select the next ECC President on May 17. Afterwhich, terms for the new president will be negotiated, finalized and a public statement will be issued by June 14. On July 1 the new President will officially take office.

“Having that number of applicants in this environment is a testimony to, well it’s a testimony to many things, but it’s a testimony to you know the strength of El Camino’s reputation, and frankly, the job that Dr. Maloney has been doing the past five years,” Trustee Kenneth Brown said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS STORY WAS UPDATED ON MARCH 17 FOR CLARITY.