The Board of Regents of the University of Michigan may choose the its new President in less than a week.
College Provost Lee Bollinger was named one of four finalists in the presidential search two weeks ago .
The Regents met privately on Tuesday and decided to begin the final stage of deliberations next Tuesday.
Michigan Law School Dean Jeffrey Lehman, who was the chairman of the presidential search advisory committee and who moderated the town meetings, said there is no way of knowing how long the deliberations will take.
"The meetings could last a day or they could go on for weeks," Lehman said. "It's completely unpredictable."
Lehman said the Regents will spend the next five days preparing for the meeting by collecting information and forming opinions about the four candidates.
"Each Regent will be reading and reviewing videotapes of the public interviews," Lehman said. "They'll also be calling people they know who know the candidates to try to develop more sophisticated impressions."
Vice President of University Relations Walter Harrison also said recent rulings forcing all deliberations to take place in public might hinder the Regents. A judge ruled all deliberations must take place in public in order to satisfy laws which say presidential searches must be open.
Bollinger visited Ann Arbor, Mich., last Thursday to participate in a series of interviews, town meetings and social events with the Regents and the public.
The other three candidates are Stanley Chodorow, provost at the University of Pennsylvania, Carol Christ, vice chancellor, provost and English professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Larry Faulkner, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.