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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bell becomes finalist for NIC presidency

From Staff Reports The Spokesman-Review

Priscilla Bell, the interim president of North Idaho College, has been named a late finalist to have the job permanently.

The NIC board of trustees had narrowed its list of contenders to two candidates who visited the campus in May. Bell was not one of them.

One of the two finalists, Ronald Kraft, who previously served as president of the Washington State Community and Technical Colleges’ Alliance for Corporate Education, withdrew from consideration May 25.

That left only Leah Bornstein, 42, chief executive officer at a branch of Colorado Mountain College.

The board has met in closed session several times since Kraft backed out. Board members voted Friday to name Bell a finalist, according to an NIC press release.

Bell was named interim president when NIC President Michael Burke left in March to become president of San Jose City College.

She was president of Highline Community College in Des Moines, Wash., from 2000 to 2006. That school serves about 18,000 students a year.

She previously had been president of New York’s Fulton-Montgomery Community College.

Bell earned a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Texas. She has a master’s degree in counseling from California State University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

The college reports that Bell will appear at two public forums on Tuesday. The first will begin at 10 a.m. in NIC’s Molstead Library Todd Lecture Hall. The second begins at 6 p.m. in the Kidd Island Bay Room at The Coeur d’Alene Resort.