SAN MARCOS ---- An advisory panel working to find the next president for Cal State San Marcos is set to sift through the credentials of applicants at a meeting this month on the campus.

At that meeting, scheduled for Sept. 19, panel members expect to be filled in on the backgrounds and credentials of those who have applied. That information is being gathered by a search firm hired to assist the committee.

The panel is then expected to make recommendations to the CSU board of trustees on who should become the third president of 14-year-old Cal State San Marcos. The trustees are expected to make a decision at a meeting Nov. 17 and 18 in Long Beach.

"They (the trustees) are on track to make a selection at the meeting in November," CSU system spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler said Thursday. "And I think it's highly unlikely that a suitable candidate will not be found."

The Sept. 19 session in San Marcos will be the advisory committee's first meeting since it met to organize on May 3. Then, in what was billed as the panel's one and only public session for the duration of the selection process, leaders of the CSU system pleaded for secrecy. They urged committee members to disclose no names or identifying information about applicants, or any details about the deliberations.

The Cal State system is seeking a new president in San Marcos because of the departure of Alexander Gonzalez, who left in July after six years to take the top job at Cal State Sacramento. An interim appointee, Roy McTarnaghan, has made it clear he is going to serve for only six months. McTarnaghan, who took over July 1, has said he wants to maintain his legal residency in Florida, a state that requires him to be in residence at least six months of the year.

Said Dick Montanari, the president of the Academic Senate at CSUSM and a member of the advisory panel, "I think that's one thing that is so very clear: That he (McTarnaghan) is truly interim."

Montanari said he has heard nothing yet from the search firm, Educational Management Network, that's been hired to collect resumes, invite highly recommended nominees to apply and help out with the search. The firm's liaison to the panel, Jean Dawdall of Nantucket, Mass., could not be reached for comment Thursday.

"I'm optimistic that we will come up with a good set of candidates," Montanari said, noting that the final decision is going to be up to the trustees.

Asked what would happen if no suitable candidate were found by November, he said: "I don't think anyone really wants to think about that. I don't think anyone really wants to talk about it. I think we're confident we're going to get some really dynamite applications."

CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed has told the panel that selecting an institution's president is "the single most important thing the trustees do." Trustee Robert Foster, who is the president of Southern California Edison, said potential top-flight leaders won't apply unless confidentiality is assured because they'd jeopardize their present jobs if word gets out that they are looking for work elsewhere.

The 13-member advisory panel is made up of eight CSUSM faculty members and staff, the student government president, the chair of the CSUSM university council, an alumnus, a dean and the president of Cal State Fullerton, Milton A. Gordon.

In advertising for the job, the CSU stated that it seeks someone who's accessible, approachable, energetic, open-minded and "flexible personally." The university also specified the ideal candidate would have "demonstrated successes" in raising money and also be a "good listener" who communicates "easily and often" and would serve as a moral compass for Cal State San Marcos.