SAN MARCOS ---- Pleading for secrecy, the head of the panel selecting a new president for Cal State San Marcos met Friday with a local advisory group and said a guarantee of confidentiality will be necessary to attract a top pool of applicants.

Gathered around a conference table in the president's office at Craven Hall on the San Marcos campus, a group of 13 people who will sift through the resumes also learned that the CSU trustees could make their final choice as early as mid-November. Because of the need for confidentiality, Friday's meeting was slated to be the group's only public meeting in the process.

The Cal State system is searching for the third president in the nearly 14-year history of the San Marcos campus as Alexander Gonzalez, the chief executive there since 1997, gets set to leave in July for the top job at Cal State Sacramento.

Gonzalez, who came to the school as an interim appointee, replaced founding President Bill Stacy, now the chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Robert Foster, president of Southern California Edison and a Cal State system trustee since 1997, told the meeting it was "extraordinarily important" that candidates be guaranteed confidentiality. Otherwise, he said, potential top-flight leaders won't apply for fear of jeopardizing their present jobs if word gets out that they are looking for work elsewhere.

"You give your word that you are going to keep this process confidential," he said, looking around the table. "You cannot answer any questions as to whether someone is under consideration. ... This is a very vital part of getting qualified candidates. ... Don't talk to anyone about the deliberations."

Chancellor Charles B. Reed, who attended the meeting Friday and serves along with trustee Chairwoman Debra S. Farar as an ex-officio member of the selection panel, said he would aim to whittle the field to three to five candidates. He said he would expect all the names to be arrived at in a collegial process in which the campus and trustee groups arrive at a consensus.

He also told the group that selecting an institution's president is "the single most important thing the trustees do."

Eight CSUSM faculty and staff are being joined by a student, the chair of the university council, an alumnus, a dean and the president of Cal State Fullerton, Milton A. Gordon, to advise the trustees on the choice.

Foster said his trustees' selection panel could add a name to any list recommended by the campus-based group, but would likely end up agreeing with the local advisory committee's choices. "You'll be amazed," he said, "how everybody kind of centers on a very small group of (candidates)."

The schedule calls for the finalists to make separate daylong visits to the San Marcos campus in late October or early November. The trustees would interview those finalists in Long Beach on Nov. 17 and likely approve a choice at their public meeting that same week.

The panel at Friday morning's meeting also tinkered with the wording of the job description so that the campus might attract more of what they called "non-traditional" applicants that might even include someone without a doctoral degree.

Asked by Foster to name the top qualities they would seek in a new leader, panelists called for someone with a deep commitment to diversity and accessibility who has the adroitness to manage growth amid shaky budgets and the charm to bridge any gaps between the campus and community.

One campus advisory panelist, Steve Lilly, dean of the College of Education, said Cal State San Marcos should find someone with the know-how to promote the growth of planned new academic programs such as health and human services. He also said the campus needs a person to develop "more transparent" information channels so people on and off campus know right away about important goings on. Foster said it sounded like everyone was looking for someone who wears a cape, a large "S" on his or her chest and who bounds out of telephone booths to tackle big tasks.

More than one said that the current chief academic officer, Provost Robert Sheath, was handling the job well in developing new courses of study and that a new president should complement that effort by promoting the programs throughout the region.

The next session on selecting the president is set for Sept. 19, when resumes will be sorted.

Ads are expected to be published this month in a leading trade publication, the Chronicle of Higher Education. A site is slated to go up on the Web at www.calstate.edu/execsearch describing the campus and the job. Applications are due early in September.