The search committee chosen to find a new Bismarck State College president has scheduled a number of “listening sessions” for faculty, staff, students and the public.
Current BSC President Dr. Larry Skogen will be leaving next June.
The first listening session is scheduled Wed., Oct. 16th, at the BSC National Energy Center of Excellence, for BSC faculty and staff.
"The listening sessions really give us an opportunity to get thoughts on what could be critical to the search," said State Board of Higher Education member Tim Mihalick, the co-chair of the search committee. "Hopefully, we'll get some good feedback as we begin the process to find the next president."
Skogen gave the state Board of Higher Education a year’s notice, so BSC would not have to appoint an interim president. Skogen will be on campus until June 30th, and the new president would likely start July first.
"Having him still with us throughout this year is really a blessing, and is a positive for our campus," said BSC vice-president for academic affairs Dan Leingang, who is also a co-chair of the search committee.
"It gives us a good sense of what we need to do to replace him," Mihalick said. "That will be a challenge, because he's done a fantastic job."
Leingang said the committee will meet October 30th to finalize some time frames.
"We hope to have advertisements out soon," Leingang said. "The committee will come up with a group of finalists that we would invite to campus. First, interviews would be done through technology, and the finalists would be done in-person on campus."
Leingang said the target would be to have three candidates for the full board to consider at its March meeting. He said the committee will do the search without hiring an outside consultant.
"Our team, on our staff, ran the search for the president of BSC last time," Leingang said. "We have experience doing that."
Leingang said doing that would save money, and would use the experience in-house.
Leingang said he expects a lot of interest in the BSC position. He said BSC is the third largest college in North Dakota, in terms of enrollment. And it is working to become a "polytechnic" institution.
