Prospective CCSN president couldn’t pass up opportunity

Thursday, May 20, 2004 | 9:27 a.m.

CCSN's chosen candidate for president says he had no desire to leave his current job in Wisconsin but that the opportunity to be a part of the dynamic growth of CCSN was too great to pass up.

"I've been a college president for many years," said Richard Carpenter, currently president of the Wisconsin Community and Technical College System. "When you get to this point in your career, what matters most is not titles or even compensation packages but what impact you can make."

The Community College of Southern Nevada search committee, made up of college faculty and staff as well as university regents, voted unanimously to recommend Carpenter, 50, as the next president in a meeting last week.

Regents are scheduled to vote on Carpenter's appointment and contract at their June 3 and 4 meetings in Elko. Carpenter said he has agreed to start Aug. 1, after the college system in Wisconsin has finished its budget for the next two years.

"The regents wanted me to start by July 1," Carpenter said. "But I owe it to my present employer not to leave him in the lurch."

Details of Carpenter's contract were not available Tuesday. Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers said he is still in the "final throes" of pounding out the details.

Carpenter said he has requested a four-year contract with tenure upon hire, two stipulations the University and Community College System of Nevada officials have agreed on.

The stability of a multiyear contract was important to him, Carpenter said, because as director of the Wisconsin system, he had worked on a year-to-year basis with no contract.

As in any state, Carpenter said, the Wisconsin job was also politically vulnerable in that he walked a "high wire" in balancing the needs of the 13 elected regents, a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor, along with overseeing the needs of 16 college presidents within the system.

Carpenter is likely to need his tightrope walking skills as CCSN president.

Although he wouldn't comment on removed CCSN president Ron Remington's continued quest to be reinstated, Carpenter did note repeatedly that his first order of business at the community college would be to promote healing after the Remington fallout. He also said constant communication with the Board of Regents, the chancellor and the system office, as well as state lawmakers would be key to his success at the community college.

"Politics and education are just inexplicably intertwined," Carpenter said. "They always have been and always will be."

"As long as a CEO is focused on communication and keeping regents apprised and sharing information at the same time with all the regents, doing everything above board," everything should be fine, Carpenter said.

Moving from being director of an entire system to being a president of a single institution may be seen as a step down by some, but Carpenter said he is eager "to return to campuses and the college level.

"That is where my joy is." he said.

Carpenter said he was also motivated by the chance to help with the healing process, which he said he will begin by first getting to know people at the college.

"There's a good camaraderie, a good sense of family among the faculty I met there," Carpenter said. "Given the last few years and the turning of the CEOs, I was really struck by that. You would not expect to see that (camaraderie) in this situation. You expect almost a demoralized unit that wasn't cohesive. I want to reach out to them (faculty, staff and students) and get a sense of who they are and what they do and what their dreams are," Carpenter said. "Basically I want to get to know them as a person and not as a president."