LYNN – North Shore Community College has begun what is sure to be an arduous job: finding a replacement for President Wayne M. Burton.”There is a lot of interest,” said Madeline Wallis, vice president of human resources at NSCC. “A lot of people have approached me in the hallway to say they want to be on the search committee.”Burton announced in January he would leave NSCC on July 31 after 13 years at the helm. Wallis said the search for Burton’s successor is driven largely by the Board of Trustees.”They took a vote at their last meeting to approve looking for an executive search firm,” Wallis said.Since she has not yet been through a search process at the college, Wallis said she is hoping the executive search firm will help develop a timeline for the process.While she searches for a firm to help with the presidential search, the trustees are responsible for putting together a search committee that will be charged with sifting through resumes, conducting interviews and eventually site visits.Wallis said the search committee will comprise nine to 13 people with at least three from the Board of Trustees. There are also four employee slots, one each representing faculty, professional staff, management and support, and at least one student. If the trustees so choose, they can also add someone from the community at large or an alumnus.”The Commissioner of Higher Education gets to appoint one person as well,” Wallis said.”And interest is high,” added NSCC spokeswoman Linda Brantley.Interested NSCC employees and students can apply via an online application process where they must state why they want to sit on the search committee.Part of the search also includes developing a presidential job description.The search committee will also have to contend with a handful of new guidelines imposed by the Board of Higher Education last October that lay out specifics when it comes to hiring a new president.Wallis said some of the new rules include checking in at various points of the search with the Commissioner of Higher Education and allowing him to review final choices.At the same time as the search, NSCC is also developing a three-year strategic plan. The hope is that the completion of the plan will coincide with the choice of a new president, Brantley said. She said it would be nice if the new president could come in and pick up a document that outlined exactly where the college was headed.Neither Wallis nor Brantley speculated on a time frame for the search, but both said it would be some months before a final presidential choice would be made.”It seems it will take awhile,” Wallis said. “We have to develop a description ? post the advertisement for four or five weeks for a national search and review resumes.””Obviously we want someone as soon as possible,” added Brantley. “But (trustees) Chairman Rich Yagjian has said they will pay attention to the fact that they must do the search right and well, and make it transparent so everyone knows what is going on.”Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].