Op-Ed: Change is good: Opportunities await NIC

North Idaho College has an exciting future under new leadership with existing state of the art facilities and extremely talented employees. Many have desired innovative approaches to admissions, teaching, scheduling and marketing of NIC programs only to hit a wall with the outgoing administration.

Some areas worth exploring to keep NIC competitive include competency-based education that allows students to achieve their educational goals at their pace and recognizes skills previously learned, assigned student mentors to ensure student success, educator peer mentoring and review of coursework/online course sites to ensure high-quality course materials and delivery, modular coursework that allows students to begin their college career the first of any month year-round rather than January, June or August start dates, computer skills assessments/remediation to ensure new students have the computer skills to be successful in college and in today’s workplace.

NIC has a robust tenure process to ensure educators meet high quality standards, but the outgoing administration has not valued granting tenure-track status to all new full-time faculty which results in some new faculty not receiving the onboarding, mentoring and evaluation that is guaranteed in the tenure process. NIC needs a continuity plan for smooth transition of employee turnover. The outgoing administration has not embraced continuity for employees who leave with specialized knowledge and skills to have time to mentor and teach their replacement.

Rather than focus on the dysfunction of the current board members, let’s concentrate on the opportunities for NIC to compete in higher education in the 21st century.

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Sue Shibley of Post Falls is a recently retired North Idaho College 25-plus year faculty member/division chair.