Board selects transition team to assist new NPC president

The team includes Chairman Wei Ma, faculty in Educational Technology at the White Mountain Campus in Show Low; Daphne Brimhall, library media technician at the White Mountain Campus; Michael Chance, information services support technician at the Painted Desert Campus in Holbrook; Michael Colwell, academic advisor for the Springerville and St. Johns centers in Apache County; Deena Gillespie, records evaluator at the Painted Desert Campus; Cathy Reed, secretary to the Dean of Nursing and Allied Health at the White Mountain Campus; and Gail Campbell, associate dean of Education, and College and Career Preparation at the Little Colorado Campus in Winslow.

An action item on the agenda for the board was a six-month extension of a consulting contract. The contract, originally entered into in April, was to pay $10,000 per month to GeoDriven LLC and its principal consultant, Eva Putzova. According to the item presented, Putzova’s duty is “to bridge NPC’s institutional data collection and management with decision and policy making, and assist with structural improvements to institutional effectiveness and model best approaches to drive success initiatives.”

Dr. Swarthout explained, “We have made significant, but insufficient progress. There are a lot of projects moving forward, including a data inventory of the entire college, which will be an attempt to make us more efficient and unify how we are doing things.

“The extension is not budgeted, however, the money is available in Prop 301, where we have more than adequate funds to cover this.” Proposition 301 was passed in the November 2000 general election, calling for the Arizona Department of Revenue to begin collecting an additional 0.6 percent sales tax for education across the state.

The governing board approved the extension, effective Nov. 1.

Also on the agenda was the monthly financial report presented by Chief Business Officer Maderia Ellison. “The first couple of months of the year are always start-up; we have only received in the general fund the first quarterly payments for maintenance and operations and equalization from the state,” Ellison said. “Total revenue is $3 million, total expenditures are $3.7 million, so when revenues catch up, they will exceed the expenses, but not in this first couple of months of the year.” She explained that the budget is on track and had no notable issues or concerns.

In other financial news, audits were performed as part of the yearly routine for NPC Friends and Family, as well as the Northern Arizona Training Center (NATC). Friends and Family finds and raises monies for student use, including scholarships, while NATC is a training facility used by police and fire departments throughout the county. Both audits were without issue and were found, as Ellison said, “with clean opinions, and no issues were brought to our attention that required any time of management intervention.”

A written report was submitted to the board from the Human Resources Department stating the re-posting of several open positions, including a junior network and systems administrator, systems support technician, and coordinator of administrative systems and projects. Swarthout explained, “We are having extreme difficulty in getting qualified applicants.” Parties interested in applying for those positions should contact the Human Resources Department at the Painted Desert Campus, located at 2251 E. Navajo Blvd. in Holbrook.

The board also approved an agreement between the Navajo County Education Service Agency and NPC to operate and maintain a van filled with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning materials to travel to schools in the district. The agreement begins immediately.

The next meeting of the board is tentatively scheduled at 10 a.m., on Tuesday, Nov. 21, at the Tiponi Community Center on the Painted Desert Campus.