Finalists for top NIC job will meet with public

Finalists for the presidency at North Idaho College will be in town Thursday to meet with the public.

A 22-member search committee selected Leah Bornstein and Ronald Kraft from a pool of 34 applicants. Bornstein serves as the chief executive officer of Colorado Mountain College’s campus in Summit.

Kraft was president and chief executive officer for an alliance of community and technical colleges in Washington state from 2004 until January. Based in Bellevue, the Alliance for Corporate Education provides educational services for businesses and government.

The two will make public presentations at NIC Thursday morning and at the Coeur d’Alene Inn that evening. No questions from the public will be taken, but anyone can meet with and question the candidates individually after the presentations. Comment cards will be provided to give feedback to the college board of trustees, which is expected to pick the next president in June.

The announcement of the final candidates comes a couple of weeks earlier than the search committee had planned. Community colleges all over the country are looking for new presidents, and committee members wanted to name finalists before they take other jobs, said NIC spokesman Kent Propst.

Kraft is also in the running for a job as president of Bellingham Technical College in Western Washington and was a finalist for the presidencies at Pueblo Community College and Modesto Junior College. Bornstein is a finalist for the president’s job at Coconino Community College in northern Arizona.

Kraft has served as vice president of advancement and special assistant to the president at Lord Fairfax Community College in Virginia. He also has experience in the corporate world, having served as a managing partner for the Resource Group, a market research and program assessment company, and vice president for planning for Lantel Systems Solutions, a phone systems company. Both are based in San Diego. Bornstein has been with Colorado Mountain College since 2003 and has served as chief academic officer at Colorado’s Lamar Community College, vice president for academic affairs for University College at the University of Denver and vice president for instruction at Higher Colleges of Technology-Center for Education Research and Training in the United Arab Emirates.

Both candidates hold doctorates.

While Bornstein and Kraft were the only two finalists named, Propst said none of the unnamed semifinalists is out of the picture.

“If something happens and neither of them are acceptable, we still have candidates in the pool,” he said.