The process to determine whether former Vice President of Investments and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Thomas Kannam’s role will be filled by a new CIO or outsourced to a private firm will continue until the end of April or early May, according to Vice President for Finance and Administration John Meerts. In January, Meerts had originally stated that he wanted the search process to be completed by the end of June, but predicted that it would be done as early as the end of March.

“We have been working very diligently on this project and have made good progress,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Argus. “We are very close to having a list of finalists for both the outsourced and in-house options. Obviously we want to do this right and it is taking us just a bit longer because of various scheduling issues.”

After Kannam’s dismissal last October, management of the endowment was taken over by Meerts, Associate Vice President for Finance Nathan Peters, Manager of Financial Reporting Valerie Nye, and Investment Analyst Brett Salafia with assistance from a 12-member portfolio subcommittee of the Board of Trustees.