Committee to Search for UCI Director : College athletics: Nine-member group expected to recommend candidates to replace Ford in late September.

UC Irvine has appointed a nine-member committee to conduct a search for a new athletic director and hopes to have the process completed in a little more than two months, the school announced Thursday.

The timetable is an advancement of what was announced July 13 when Tom Ford resigned after two years at UCI to become assistant executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches. School officials said at the time that they hoped to name a replacement by December or early next year.

The application deadline is now Sept. 1, with interviews to begin about Sept. 16. The committee’s final recommendation of two to four candidates is to be presented to Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life, by Sept. 25.

The search committee chairman is James McGaugh, a professor who is the director of UCI’s Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. He is a former UCI executive vice chancellor.

Also named to the committee from the university were: Martha Newkirk, president of the UCI Alumni Assn. and a former regent; Thomas Parham, director of the Counseling Center and Career Planning and Placement Center; Rod Baker, men’s basketball coach, and Colleen Matsuhara, women’s basketball coach.

Community members named were Dave Quisling, president of Drug Prevention Strategy and of the UCI Athletic Foundation, and Kenneth Rohl, chief executive officer of the Rohl Corporation and a member of the athletic foundation’s board of directors.

One undergraduate and one graduate student also will be on the committee.

When he resigned, Ford cited an ongoing budget crisis and disagreements with members of the university administration as being among the reasons for his decision.