The Northwest College Board of Trustees has begun laying out plans for the college’s presidential search.

While the board took no action at its Dec. 14 meeting, the trustees considered informational items on all that will need to be considered, such as qualifications and competencies sought, and a timeline.

The selection process will involve a committee composed of representatives from constituencies on campus and in the community. The trustees expect the committee members will be chosen and have their first meeting in mid-January.

Then-Board President Dusty Spomer asked if the search committee’s role would be advisory or if it would have authority to make a selection.

Trustee John Housel said the goal of having a committee was involving all stakeholders toward the aim of shared governance. He said without some kind of vote, it might diminish shared governance.

“There’s a balance there, and I don’t know where that exactly is,” Housel said.

In the past, the committee forwarded recommendations to the board, narrowing the search down to three finalists.

“This is our statutory obligation,” Housel argued. “We as board members are bound by statute to select, for president who we, as trustees elected by our constituency, deemed to be the best candidate.”

That would include the option of discarding the three finalists the committee selects and start the process over, should the board feel the finalists aren’t a good fit.

Qualifications

In developing the desired qualifications, the board will draw on community input they’ve received in the past year, gathered by consultants with CampusWorks. The data went into NWC’s strategic vision plan for the next five years.

They are also using their 2013 search criteria as a baseline, which led to the selection of outgoing President Stefani Hicswa. She resigned in October to accept a chancellor position at Montana State University-Billings.

Jill Anderson, NWC director of human resources, presented the competencies the college sought that year. They included strategic and innovative management, integrity and trust, decision quality and problem solving, building effective teams, motivating others and managerial courage.

College leaders also had a “success profile” that outlined what they thought the next NWC president would be. The qualities included a strategic and long-term thinker, a skilled communicator, an exceptional decision maker, a visionary, a supportive administrator, an empathetic individual, a student-centered leader and a supporter of workforce development.

They also sought someone who would be committed to an effective relationship with the board of trustees, and who had collegiate teaching experience.

The board discussed what educational requirements would be included in the current presidential search profile. In 2007, the college’s presidential search required at least a master’s degree, but a doctorate degree was preferred. In the 2013 search, they required a doctorate degree. At the time, Anderson explained, the college was concerned about its accreditation, and to improve that, they felt it was important to have an academic at the helm.

With the college in a financial crisis, Anderson said, “there may be a different view as to what those qualifications should be, given the state of the college right now.”

Timeline and advertising

Under the tentative schedule, an offer would be extended to the selected candidate by commencement in May 2021.

“That’s not set in stone,” trustee Housel said, “because it’ll ultimately be the presidential search committee that adopts that calendar.”

As for the profile outlining requirements and preferences for qualifications, that’s tentatively set to be finalized in January, when the search committee meets. Advertising and outreach will begin in February, and semi-finalists will be selected by the end of March.

Video interviews of those semi-finalists will begin in April, and finalists will be selected by mid-April. On-campus visits and face-to-face interviews will be conducted at the end of April, and the search committee will make its recommendations to the board of trustees by the first week of May.

Anderson discussed some of the advertising strategies the college will use for its recruitment. This will include a dedicated webpage on the college’s site, which Anderson said gets a lot of traffic. They will also use social media campaigns, advertisements on HigherEd Jobs — a job board site — and ads in the Higher Education Chronicle.

The estimated maximum cost of the advertising campaign is $10,000.

Housel expressed concern over how the proposed timeline delays promotion until February. The trustee explained that, for an executive level position, the “window of opportunity” is prior to the end of the year.

“The sooner we get the word out the better,” Housel said.

However, Anderson said it’s hard to begin promoting a position before preferred and minimum qualifications are known. Without a clear picture of what the college is seeking, there’s no direction for designing a webpage for the college’s site.

“If that’s the only time they go to our site and it’s not something of interest, they might not go back,” Anderson warned.

The board discussed the possibility of giving Anderson some direction by which the college’s marketing department could begin advertising for the position, but that ran into the problem that the search committee hasn’t been formed.

“I want to have full involvement of the search committee on every decision we can possibly involve them in, but this is a matter that we might be missing an opportunity for potential candidates,” Housel said.

The board didn’t create a budget or guidelines by which the advertising could begin, meaning the campaign won’t start until after the search committee meets in January.