The search committee seeking a new president for Boca Raton-based Florida Atlantic University has honed down to seven a list of 30 potential candidates for that job.

But even seven -which includes two existing FAU staff members- is too many, said Jan Greenwood, vice-president of the A.T. Kearney Executive Search Company, the headhunting firm that brought the stacks of candidate resumes to a meeting Tuesday, and it’s unlikely the firm can come up with information on all seven by the first week of December, when the final interviews are planned.

Greenwood urged the 17-member panel to meet before December in order to narrow the field even further -perhaps to two or three.

Members agreed to hold a meeting, but set no specific date.

In addition, A.T. Kearney said that as many as 20 other potential candidates are interested in the job but have not yet applied for it.

The panel is looking to replace Dr. Anthony J. Catanese, the university’s fourth president, who presided over a 12-year period of unprecedented growth at FAU before leaving in mid-summer to become president of the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The seven include the only internal candidates who applied: FAU business dean Bruce Mallen and Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, Larry Lemanski.

Only one of the seven candidates, Peter Hoff, president of the University of Maine’s flagship Orono campus, already heads a university, but it is considerably smaller than FAU, with about 11,000 students compared to FAU’s 25,000.

The others include Thomas Hanley, engineering dean at the University of Louisville, KY, Terry Hickey, provost and chief academic officer of the University of Akron in Ohio, and Keith Miller, provost of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. All are public universities.