By the end of February, the committee searching for a new chancellor for University of North Carolina Wilmington hopes to have its current list winnowed to no more than six candidates, according to committee co-chairwoman Wendy Murphy, also a member of the UNCW Board of Trustees and its former chairwoman.

“Our next step is a meeting, around [February] 20th, doing airport interviews with about 12 people,” Murphy said in a telephone conversation Monday. The purpose of the committee’s interviews, which will take place at an airport somewhere in the state, will be to narrow the field of candidates to several who will be invited to visit the UNCW campus for further interviews, she said.

Asked how many candidates, ideally, would be asked to campus for interviews with a broader range of UNCW stakeholders, Murphy said that that four to six individuals would be a “good number.” That way, if one or two candidates withdrew, there would still be several candidates to consider, she explained.

“That happened last time [during the search for chancellor Rosemary DePaolo’s replacement in 2011] but has not happened so far this time,” Murphy said.

If the committee is successful this month in identifying the candidates for on-campus interviews, those interviews could well take place in March, with the names of three finalists being forwarded to UNC president Tom Ross after that so he can interview them.

With such a timetable, the UNC Board of Governors could vote to approve the successful candidate at its scheduled meeting in April and an announcement of UNCW’s next chancellor could be made that month, Murphy said. The committee’s goal is to have a new chancellor in place by July 1 of this year.

“The board of governors likes to work around its scheduled meetings,” she said, noting that, because of an abbreviated time frame for consideration of DePaolo’s successor, the board had to call a special meeting to approve Gary Miller as chancellor.

Even in its final stages, the search process intends to protect the identities of candidates, Murphy said, explaining that some individuals “will not enter a search if it is public. We want people [as candidates] who are looking for opportunities but are all right where they are.”

UNCW’s chancellor search committee is composed of representatives of the trustees, faculty, staff, student body, alumni and other school stakeholders, according to the chancellor search section on the university’s website. The committee is working with the executive search firm of Baker and Associates LLC, based in Marietta, Georgia.