The committee that will ultimately choose the next chancellor of the University of Wisconsin is continuing its project of nominating candidates, including the recent addition of the prominent mayor of Boston, Mass.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino was one of hundreds nominated for review in the national search for the person who will take Chancellor John Wiley’s position when he steps down in the fall.

“Apparently someone was impressed with what he has done there [in Boston] and thought that maybe that would be translated to this position,” said David Musolf, Search and Screen Committee spokesperson and secretary of the faculty at UW.

It is up to the individual whether they turn in an application, though, Musolf said. Menino told the Boston Globe he does not know who nominated him, and he has no plans to leave his current post.

Menino was sent a packet of materials by the chair of the committee, Musolf said, which is standard procedure for all nominees.

According to Suchita Shah, student representative on the Search and Screen Committee, the committee looks at each application separately and will decide as a committee if the candidate is qualified.

The committee has a set of qualifications that they are looking for in each of the candidates, including having “academic scholarship and teaching credentials and accomplishments, or equivalent professional credentials and accomplishments, which will command the respect of the academic community.”

The qualifications also state that the next chancellor must be tenurable at the rank of professor at UW.

The committee is working toward creating a list of five candidates to present to a special Board of Regents committee. The Search and Screen Committee has already reviewed most of more than 50 applications submitted by nominees, according to committee chair Marsha Mailick Seltzer.

“Things are going great,” Mailick Seltzer said. “It is a very intense process, and we have spent an enormous amount of time reviewing the candidate files that have come in.”

The deadline for accepting nominations for the position was March 28, but the committee is still receiving applications from those who have been nominated, Mailick-Seltzer said.

“I am very excited about how things are going,” Mailick-Seltzer said. “There are some great candidates, and it is a great job.”

There has been lots of healthy debate between the members of the committee, Mailick-Seltzer said. The committee will meet three times this week, and they plan to meet three times next week, she said.

Once the committee has completed their review of all applications, they will determine a list of 10 to 12 candidates who will be interviewed by the committee.

Musolf said the committee plans on narrowing the candidates to a group of five to be presented to the Board of Regents special committee before the end of the academic year. UW System President Kevin Reilly will then make the finalists’ names public.