What’s going on with the president searches at ECC and Buffalo State?

Both said goodbye to their former presidents last academic year amid challenging circumstances. They share the same demographic as the two SUNY schools in Western New York that serve the most local, underrepresented, financially challenged and first-generation students. Both have suffered serious enrollment declines that may never recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And both hope to name the person who will lead them to stability and success by the end of the year.

Both schools say they are on track to bring candidates for their top job in for interviews around mid-September, and both are keeping the names of potential finalists confidential, at least for now.

Both presidential searches also promise to be somewhat political – Buffalo State’s candidates may even include actual politicians – and will produce some of the first SUNY presidential appointments under SUNY Chancellor John King, the former U.S. Secretary of Education who took over the top SUNY job in January.

Former ECC president David Balkin, who resigned in December under duress after barely 11 months in office, is among the candidates nominated for the Buffalo State job, he confirmed to The Buffalo News. Other names being bandied about include Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo.

ECC’s search is down to four finalists whose names are being kept confidential “per SUNY policy,” said Jeffrey Stone, chair of ECC’s board of trustees. But the four likely include ECC’s current officer-in-charge, Adiam Tsegai, who was a finalist in its last presidential search and became acting president after Balkin left.

Here’s a look at what we know about where the searches stand.

At ECC’s board of trustees August meeting, Stone reported that the college’s search firm, AGB Search of Washington, D.C.,…