Is Machen a finalist to lead U. of Florida?

University of Utah President Bernie Machen will likely be on a list of finalists for the presidency of the University of Florida scheduled to be released today.

U. officials refused comment Friday and were referring inquiries regarding Machen to administrators at the Gainesville, Fla., school. The search committee's spokesman said that the names of the "three or six or seven remaining finalists" were scheduled to be announced this morning but said he couldn't confirm whether Machen will be among them.

He did say the Gainesville Sun, a local newspaper, "has apparently done its job" in making Machen's name public. The paper printed a story Friday stating that an administrator at the U. confirmed Machen's candidacy and that he is expected to be in Gainesville on Monday.

The administrator apparently called the paper later to ask for an embargo on the information, but reporter Carrie Miller refused to hold off. Miller's story listed Machen and the president of the Louisiana State University system as among the 11 likely finalists for the job.

The search process in Florida higher education is more open than in Utah and most states. Names of finalists are released when interviews are set to begin, said Florida search committee spokesman Steve Orlando.

Interviews with all the finalists will be Monday, and names will be narrowed to three by Tuesday evening. Those candidates will be interviewed again Wednesday in a series of question-and-answer sessions with faculty, students, administrators and community residents. An announcement of a new president is scheduled Wednesday evening, he said.

The names of other finalists, several of whom currently work for the University of Florida, have been previously released. They include David Colburn, Florida's provost and senior vice president; Win Phillips, the university's vice president for research and dean of the graduate school; Mike Martin, the university's vice president for agricultural and natural resources; Roberto D. Peccei, vice provost for research, University of California at Los Angeles; and Robert C. Richardson, vice provost for research and professor of physics at Cornell University and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1992 for physics.

The new president will replace Charles Young, the former chancellor at UCLA who has been president in Florida since 1999.

The University of Florida is much bigger than the U., with the fourth-largest student enrollment of all U.S. universities in 2002 at more than 46,000 students.