The process for hiring successors to Berkshire Community College President Ellen Kennedy and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts President James Birge is starting to take shape.

Berkshire Community College President Ellen Kennedy is retiring at the end of the academic year, and a search committee has been appointed to hire the school's next leader.

MCLA's President James Birge is retiring at the end of the school year. The college's Board of Trustees has appointed a search committee to screen candidates for the role.

Both administrators announced at the start of the fall semester that they would be retiring on June 30. Kennedy is stepping down having served 14 years as president at BCC; Birge will retire at the conclusion of his 10th year at the helm of MCLA.

BCC’s search process gets underway Wednesday with listening sessions scheduled to run the rest of the week. Sessions will be held Wednesday for faculty and the college community; Thursday for students, the search committee and the Board of Trustees; and Friday on Zoom for the campus community, community partners and faculty.

Links for the Zoom session can be obtained by emailing [email protected].

The listening sessions will help establish a presidential profile — a picture reflecting the college’s values and priorities and laying out the qualities the college community wants and needs from its new leader.

“We are grounding our entire process in what the Board of Higher Education expects,” BCC Board of Trustees Chair Julia Bowen told The Eagle. “The process is designed to assure our campus has a maximum voice in who its next president is.”

Bowen is adamant that the Board of Trustees is not the first and last word in who will become the college’s next president.

“It’s essential that the Board of Trustees’ voice, especially at this stage of the process, is not given outsize weight,” she said. "[The board] has one perspective.”

BCC has hired Academic Search as its hiring consultant and appointed a 14-member search committee representing students, faculty, employee labor unions, alumni and the board. The state Department of Higher Education also has a seat on the board.

At MCLA, Board of Trustees Chair Buffy Lord said the board has appointed members Brenda Burdick and Yvonne Spicer as co-chairs of the search committee.

Lord said MCLA’s search committee is “made up of individuals from a number of different campus constituencies who each bring a unique perspective to the table.” The Search Committee unanimously selected the firm of WittKieffer to coordinate the search.

Birge, MCLA’s 12th president, has held the office since 2016, when he succeeded Mary K. Grant. Kennedy, BCC’s president since 2012 and the seventh to lead the state’s first community college, succeeded Paul Raverta in the role.