Second round of NPC presidential candidate forums wraps up
National Park College wrapped up its second round of student, employee and community forums on Tuesday regarding the selection of a new president.
Also Tuesday, the NPC Board of Trustees called a special meeting for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, when it is expected to go into executive session to discuss the candidates. The college confirmed Tuesday that a final selection could be made at the meeting, though the board may also decide to take more time before making a decision.
The meeting will be held inside the Ray and Pat Smith Conference Room at the Gerald Fisher Campus Center.
NPC President John Hogan, who announced his retirement last fall, said Monday a decision could come earlier than the May time frame originally set by the search committee.
“I think it just depends on when the trustees decide,” he said. “I mean, they’ve got four candidates to review, and they might make a decision quickly or they might determine they need more time to deliberate. Searches can take on a life of their own. It’s a key decision for the college, so I expect the board to be very deliberate and thorough, and we have time to do that.”
Following the end of each of the forums, attendees were asked to fill out a survey regarding their thoughts. Student and employee forums were held throughout the day Monday and Tuesday while the community forums followed in the afternoon.
Candidates Bryan Newton, vice president for enrollment management and student services at Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury, Maryland, and Wade Derden, executive vice president for advancement and government relations at NPC, participated in Monday’s forum sessions while Kendricks Hooker, provost of Cabarrus College of Health Sciences in Concord, North Carolina, and Joel Michaelis, vice president of instruc
tion at Southeast Community College in Lincoln, Nebraska, participated in Tuesday’s.
“I think it’s gone very well,” Hogan said of the finalists’ interview process. “The transition team did a very good job of setting it up and making sure the campus was heard and that they got to meet the candidates and the candidates got to meet them. NPC is so much a part of this community. … We have a lot of stakeholders and I think that trustees have expressed they want to hear from all those stakeholders.”
Derden, the only internal candidate, who has been with the college since 2011, said the advantage of an internal candidate is the learning curve is not as steep.
“I know the faculty and staff here, I know a lot of the community members personally already, I think making that transition would be easier for me than some, obviously, for a lot of reasons,” he said.
He said there are still relationships that would have to be formed, however, and it will still take work because it is at a different level.
“Sustainability is obviously the goal,” he said when asked about the financial future of the college. “I think, what I would do, for one thing, is challenge the community to think about what would we be like without National Park College? What would Garland County be like without National Park College? What would this region be without National Park College?
“And if you really start trying to answer that question, it’s hard. It’s a difficult picture to paint. Because we do a lot. We serve this community in a lot of ways.”
Derden noted CHI St. Vincent President Dr. Doug Ross was in attendance at the community forum Monday.
“Just in the health care side of things, we provide a lot of students good jobs here locally that help others in the health care field. And so I think when we start talking about the revenue and the finance of the college and its sustainability, that’s going to be a hard question that we’re all going to have to face in the next five or six years.”
Newton said coming from Maryland one of his objectives would be to learn about the community and its needs, which involves a lot of listening.
“That is part of being president, not only in the beginning but throughout the career of a president, is making sure that he or she creates close connections with the community, that he or she is aware of community needs and community concerns and problems,” he said.
He said funding and keeping a college, especially a community college, sustainable is a challenge.
“Community colleges don’t always get the same amount of love (as four-year universities),” he said. “It’s a problem in Arkansas, it’s a problem in Maryland. I think one of the things you have to do is you have to keep those relationships up. You have to keep telling the story of why National Park is important and have to talk about what is new and what is exciting at the college.