Get to know NIC's new president: Swayne brings with him military background, wealth of leadership experience

North Idaho College President Nick Swayne shared some valuable advice he received from a mentor and friend who was his military superior when they served together in the U.S. Army.

"People don’t get up in the morning trying to screw up your day," Swayne said last week, while seated in his office on the NIC campus. "When something happens and they screw up your day, it’s not personal. Think about it from their perspective."

He gave the example of when someone’s kid wrecks the family car.

"They feel as bad, or worse about it, than you do,” he said. “Yelling at them and berating them for wrecking the car doesn’t help the situation. It doesn’t fix the car."

Swayne said he's not prone to yelling when life goes sideways.

"I don’t get mad in that way. But just thinking about that, when life goes wrong, something happens, they weren’t trying to screw up your day. That’s true 99% of the time,” he said with a chuckle. “But every once in a while you have somebody who’s like, ‘How can we mess with you today?'"

Swayne spent 26 years in the Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel. During his enlistment, he was stationed at or deployed across the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, serving during Desert Storm in his first deployment to Bosnia.

Leadership was, and continues to be, a cornerstone of his work. Aside from his military assignments, he attended several developmental schools where he learned to be prepared for the next level.

“In the military you actually learn to lead people. Those are leadership skills,” Swayne said. "Most academics, they get the experience from being in the job — if you’re a professor, then you become a department head or a dean — but you’re learning from doing it in that job; you don’t have an opportunity to get pulled out of that job for six months or so and go through a leadership development program to prepare you for the next level. I think that’s a difference I bring.”

Listening is a key part of leadership as well, he said.

"You can only see so much by yourself," Swayne said. "You have all these other people who are your eyes and ears. If you develop a sense of trust, and they trust you, then they give you feedback. You learn a lot by directional leadership, but you also learn, at the end of the day, you have to make a decision."

Swayne arrived at NIC on Aug. 1. He is the third president in less than a year and joining the administrative team following some tumultuous times for the college.

He said he had no qualms about coming to NIC.

“I paid attention. I did my homework. I knew what I was getting into,” he said. “The school needs good leadership. I thought I could provide that.”

Swayne, who earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho, is dedicated to elevating and promoting higher education in North Idaho because this is where he grew up.

"I’m committed to education," he said. "I think for many people — not everyone, but for many people – it is an opportunity to lift themselves up out of poverty and make something of themselves. It’s critical we provide that opportunity for our kids. I had that opportunity when I was a kid. I think it takes dedicated people that are going to — despite the long odds — provide those kinds of opportunities for the future generations.”

Swayne spent 14 years on the Harrisonburg City School Board in Virginia, where he was the chair of the board many of those years.

"Public boards are made up of public citizens," he said. "There are generally no qualifications, no expertise required and people come with different understandings of what the role of a board is and different expectations. That’s typically where the conflicts arise."

He worked with several different types of people and personalities during his tenure on the school board.

"We didn’t always agree, but we would communicate and you could get to an understanding of where each party was coming from," he said. "Once the vote is taken, once the majority has spoken, then everybody would get behind it and move forward. Sometimes that took more coordination and discussion, sometimes it took less, but in all cases that’s how you handle it, through those kinds of discussions."

Swayne said the political climate in Virginia is not too different from North Idaho. Cities tend to trend more liberal or "blue" and rural areas tend to be more conservative or "red."

"That’s not unlike what we see here," he said. “I think COVID really caused a lot of polarization. And I don't know if it was just COVID; there were a lot other things going on that caused some real strong polarization in the country.

“I can’t say I like it," he said. "I don’t think it’s good for the country, but it’s what we saw out there."

Looking ahead, declining enrollment is an issue NIC and community colleges across the country are facing.

"NIC has experienced the same rate of decline — according to reports I’ve been reading — that a lot of schools are, with a couple exceptions," Swayne said.

Factors creating a competitive environment for community colleges include: fewer people going into college right out of high school; women who left the workforce to care for their children; and entry-level jobs now paying high wages.

“We’re at a really strange place in America,” Swayne said. "If you're making $38 an hour without training at Caterpillar or $18 an hour at McDonald’s, while living in your parents’ basement, now is a good time to be employed. Over time, I think that will shift.”

He said the high cost of child care will make it difficult for women to return to employment.

"Somebody’s got to figure that out,” he said. “Once that happens and we can have affordable child care and women re-enter the workforce, I think we’re going to have a pent-up demand of people who skipped out on the opportunity to learn a trade or go to college. We’re going to see a bit of a resurgence. That’s my hypothesis. It’s hard to get data on that because we’re living in it right now.”