4 more applicants in mix for college top job

BENTONVILLE — Four more people have applied to run the state’s second-largest community college.

The new applicants for the presidency of Northwest Arkansas Community College are:

Steven Gates, senior vice president for learning and provost, Northwest Arkansas Community College, Bentonville.

Tony Kinkel, president, Wichita Area Technical College, Wichita, Kan.

Debra Teachman, vice president for academic affairs, Alamogordo Community College, Alamogordo, N.M.

Anthony Tricoli, chief executive officer/president, The Global Center for the Advancement of Higher Education, Atlanta.

This brings the number of applicants to 27.

Besides Gates, other applicants who currently work at an Arkansas institution are Jo Alice Blondin, chancellor of Arkansas Tech University’s Ozark campus, and Richard Dawe, president of Ozarka College in Melbourne. They had applied earlier.

Northwest Arkansas Community College, which has 8,338 students, is looking for someone to replace Becky Paneitz, who is retiring at the end of the academic year. She has run the school for about 10 years.

The job has a public maximum salary of $141,461 for the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2013, according to Act 232 of 2012. But the pay could be higher. State law allows universities to increase maximum salaries as much as 25 percent for up to 10 percent of employees. Colleges can also use private funds to increase president’s salaries.