Bell seeks 10-year plan for NIC

When the North Idaho College board began its search for a president, one thing stuck out among a long list of qualifications and characteristics: community and campus relations.

Waning enrollment, disgruntled faculty members and upset business leaders over the past several years made the ability to improve relationships on and off campus a top quality the board sought in the college’s next leader.

Six months later, President Priscilla Bell has started regular talks between the college and community business leaders and is embarking on what she hopes will be a community effort to create a plan for NIC over the next three to five years with a 10-year forecast. And it’s earning her praise.

“I would say very candidly that I think Priscilla has done an excellent job of becoming more visible and more active in the community,” said Ron Nilson, president of Ground Force Manufacturing and a member of the new group Partners in Education. “I would give her an A for what she’s done so far.”

Bell, 58, was hired in July as the college’s eighth president after serving as interim president since February. She said her goal is to help NIC respond to the growing population and to keep it a comprehensive community college – one with extensive academic and professional-technical programs.

“The key for a community college is to always keep in mind that we are the community’s college,” she said. “We can’t ever lose sight of it.”

Comments like that make longtime math instructor Bob Bohac feel better about the future of NIC. Two years ago, he said, he feared the college had lost its focus and wasn’t addressing the problems contributing to its flat enrollment.

“She’s had a great deal of emphasis on the idea of a comprehensive community college,” he said. “I think the emphasis on something other than one year at time is very, very important.”

Nilson was part of a long list of business representatives who signed a letter of no confidence in Bell’s predecessor, Michael Burke, over concerns they had about the state of NIC’s professional-technical programs. Those programs are a crucial part of the college, but keeping those balanced with the academic side of the college is a big part of Bell’s job, said Bohac, who retired this summer.

“I think we have to be careful as a community college in overemphasizing one of our goals,” he said. “A comprehensive community college is more than just a liberal arts institution. It’s many things to a lot of different people.

“Her success, I think, will be determined by how good she is at balancing all those different plugs,” he said.

Bell said such a balancing act is a critical part of a college president’s job. But different times of the year, such as the legislative session, will mean her focus could shift.

“The balance has to come over a period of time, not on a daily basis,” Bell said.

Her first major move as president, besides starting the Partners in Education group, is to create a strategic plan that will give a blueprint of the college’s goals for the next 10 years.

“What I don’t know yet is what we need to be emphasizing,” she said.

That’s why it’s to be a countywide effort that considers population and economic projections as well as the needs of North Idaho business and industry. It’s essential to her goal for North Idaho College to be responsive to the community, she said.

She plans to have a consultant hired soon to help organize the planning process and analyze input and other data. The people making up Partners in Education will bring a summary of their business goals for the next 10 years to the next meeting.

Nilson said he and other business leaders are eager to see their discussions with the college flesh out into action.

“She’s doing all the right things, but before we do a complete scorecard on her performance I think we need to be looking at not just listening,” he said.

Born in Texas, Bell began her career in education working in the adult services division of the Los Angeles school district. She moved to Tacoma after two years, where she stayed for nearly 20 years and rose through the ranks of Tacoma Community College’s student services department before becoming president of Fulton-Montgomery College in Johnston, N.Y., in 1995. She worked there until 2000, when she assumed the presidency of Highline Community College near Seattle.

Though she’s taught classes, she’s never been a full-time classroom teacher. But her time in student services gave her valuable experiences that help her lead, she said.

“In student services, you really have to listen to people,” she said. “Sometimes when you’re instruction you have the opportunity to just call all the shots.”

She said she listens to gossip, good and bad.

“Both tell me something,” she said. “I try to listen to what’s being said, both on campus and out in the community.”

The differences she sees between North Idaho College and the other community colleges she’s worked at highlight what stakeholders like Nilson and Bohac say is crucial for the college to remember: It’s the only community college in North Idaho. Highline Community College is one of 18 in the Seattle area.

And unlike NIC, Highline wasn’t funded through property taxes. “They (citizens) have a different stake in the colleges there,” she said.