UNCW could learn this Friday who will be its new leader.

Officials anticipate that the top choice for University of North Carolina Wilmington’s new chancellor will be placed before the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors at its regular meeting this Friday at East Carolina University. If, as expected, the board approves that individual, the choice would be announced and the candidate introduced later on Friday, members of the search committee and UNC Board of Governors said Tuesday.

The names of the three finalists for UNCW’s top post continue to be kept under wraps.  

“If everything works out, the candidate will be coming to campus after the meeting is over,” Wendy Murphy, a UNCW trustee and chancellor search committee co-chair, said this week.

The timing of this vote would align with a timetable Murphy outlined earlier this year. In an interview in February, Murphy said that adherence to the timetable would allow the board of governors to approve the successful candidate at its scheduled meeting in April.

“The board of governors likes to work around its scheduled meetings,” she said at that time.

The newly named chancellor replaces Gary Miller, who left UNCW last summer to become chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. William Sederburg, a higher education expert, former university president and Michigan state senator, has served as interim chancellor since Aug. 1.

The committee’s goal always has been to have a new chancellor in place by July 1 of this year, Murphy said, noting that meant in-person interviews with about 12 people at the Raleigh-Durham Airport in mid-February, which narrowed the field of candidates to five. All five subsequently visited the UNCW campus, according to university sources.

On March 19, the search committee met to further winnow the number of candidates to three. Those three names they then forwarded to UNC system president Tom Ross. He has since interviewed each one and made a recommendation to the board of governors, who must approve his choice in order for the appointment to be made.

Hannah Gage, a Wilmington resident and member of the board of governors, has followed the progress of the search. She said Tuesday she is optimistic that Friday’s meeting will result in an announcement. All three finalists are “solid,” she said, adding that she and her fellow board members are “excited” at the prospect before them.

“This search has been painstakingly meticulous and careful,” she said in an interview, adding that if it had not produced candidates that could be successful at UNCW, she said, the search committee would have regrouped.

“They were willing to walk away and start over,” she said. “But the good news here is they think they have found an extraordinary leader.”

Gage, like Murphy, said that if all goes as planned, the newly named chancellor would travel from Greenville to Wilmington for a get-acquainted event Friday afternoon on the UNCW campus.