By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
At the Barton Community College Board of Trustees study session earlier this month, college president Dr. Carl Heilman announced his retirement plans at the end of the 2023-2024 school year. The Trustees officially approved the retirement at Tuesday’s meeting and revealed the timeline to find his replacement.
Trustees Chairman Mike Johnson said applications will be accepted from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10. A search committee will sort through all the applications in early December.
"Obviously, we don't know how many applicants will get at this point," said Johnson. "We don't know the quality of those applications, but I would anticipate we will get a significant number of quality applicants for this position. The search committee will be meeting a couple of days during the week of December 4. The outcome of that week will be the semifinalists being chosen."
Johnson estimated between five to seven semifinalists. Following online, video-conference interviews, two or three finalists will be announced Jan. 22. The finalists will be on the Great Bend campus in early February to meet with the search committee, faculty and staff and the public. Barton is hopeful to announce the next president on Feb. 27.
The college’s attorney, Randy Henry, will accept the applications and handle background checks.
"This should work fine, but if you end up having 50 applicants for the job and you have to run searches on all them before you make your cut to the semifinalists, it could take a little bit more time," said Henry. "This seems like a pretty normal type of schedule for this."
Heilman was named the fifth president at Barton in July 2006. His final day with the college will be June 30, 2024.