On August 13, Dr. Faith C. Hensrud announced her retirement as president of 91̽»¨ and Northwest Technical College. Hensrud, who was named BSU’s 11th president in April of 2016, will retire effective June 30, 2022.<\/p>\n
Dr. Devinder Malhotra, chancellor of the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities, kicked off the search for Hensrud’s successor with an in-person visit to Bemidji for a series of listening sessions in September.<\/p>\n
Malhotra said in an interview with the Bemidji Pioneer that the visits were meant to help him get a sense for what traits or qualities BSU and NTC would seek in presidential candidates.<\/p>\n
“The visit helps us understand the aspirational goals and objectives of the two institutions and the kind of leader we should be looking for,” he said.<\/p>\n
During his visit, Malhotra met individually with faculty union leadership at both BSU and NTC, then held four sessions at each campus — with employees and staff, with faculty, with students, and with administrative teams — throughout the day. In the evening, he held sessions with members of both schools’ foundations.<\/p>\n
In a message following his visit, Malhotra shared his appreciation for the opportunity to hear directly from both schools what they were looking for in a future leader and commented on the deep commitment to and pride in both institutions that was evident throughout the day.<\/p>\n
Minnesota State has partnered with Greenwood\/Asher and Associates, an executive search firm based in Georgia which specializes in senior leadership searches in higher education, for support during the search. Greenwood\/Asher has spent the fall semester assembling a pool of candidates, which was narrowed down to a pool of semifinalists in collaboration with a local Search Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n
The 16-member Search Advisory Committee was assembled in October and included broad representation from Bemidji State, Northwest Tech and community partners. The committee held its first meeting on November 10, 2021, a half-day session that allowed members to meet virtually with the chancellor and the search firm, and to begin crafting a schedule for the search. The committee met again in December.<\/p>\n
The search identified a pool of finalists named in February. Those four finalists visited Bemidji from February 14-17 for in-person interviews and meetings with faculty, staff and students at both campuses and with community partners. Malhotra hopes to present a candidate to the system’s Board of Trustees at its March 2022 board meeting. If successful, the new president would begin work on July 1, 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n “In the north woods, on the shores of Lake Bemidji, nestled within limitless natural beauty and surrounded by Minnesota’s three largest Indigenous nations, lies an opportunity like no other.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the announcement of President Hensruds retirement, A committee of staff, faculty, students, community members and administrative teams was formed to aid in finding the next Bemidji State and Northwest Technical Colleges president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":528,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vol-37-no-1"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/528"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":823,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}