After seven months of searching, the hunt for Princeton’s new leader could be completed as early as tomorrow, following a scheduled meeting of the Princeton Board of Trustees.

The trustees—like Harvard’s Overseers—must approve the search committee’s recommended candidate.

“If the timing is such that a recommendation can be made during a regularly scheduled meeting, then great, but if not, a special meeting can be called,” Thomas Wright, vice president of Princeton and secretary to the search committee, said last week.

Wright said he doubted the committee would be ready to present a candidate to the board by tomorrow’s meeting, but he would not rule it out as a possibility.

Possible candidates from within Princeton include current Princeton Dean of the Faculty Joseph H. Taylor and his predecessor in that position, ethics Professor Amy Gutmann ’71.

Taylor is a physics professor and Nobel Prize-winner.

Gutmann-who was among the top four candidates in Harvard’s search—is currently Princeton’s Rockefeller University Professor of Politics, and is the founding director of the University Center for Human Values.

“[Taylor and Gutmann] are both very popular—they would be obvious choices,” said Professor Hendrik A. Hartog of the history department. “We all assumed that the two of them are among the people being considered by the search committee.”

The search committee—also like Harvard’s—is tight-lipped. Characteristically, search committee members would not confirm whether Taylor and Gutmann were being considered.

Theirs are not the only two names in the rumor mill. Lee C. Bollinger’s name made headlines during the Harvard search. Media speculation suggests that the president of the University of Michigan may once again dominate the news as Princeton draws closer to finding Princeton President Harold T. Shapiro’s successor.

But in a recent interview with The Crimson, Bollinger—a renowned First Amendment scholar and champion of affirmative action—said he does not wish to put Michigan through a search for a successor at this late a date.

“I will not be a candidate for any other position in the foreseeable future,” Bollinger said earlier this month.

Paul M. Wythes, who is a trustee and vice chair of the search committee said last week that he felt the search process was on track to select a candidate by late spring.

Wythes said he considered the search to be in phase two of the selection process. While phase one consisted of “name gathering and sourcing,” Wythes said that the committee is now interviewing candidates and narrowing down its choices.

“We don’t have a list, we’re just narrowing down things from a large number of names,” he said.