Candidate for school's president impressed with technical school

By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

When Richard Hoffman was in charge of vocational education at a school in Colorado Springs, Colo., the local Goodyear plant needed additional training for some of its workers.

"We already had classes, but they needed more than that," Hoffman said Wednesday morning. He's one of two applicants for president of the new Salina Area Technical College and was in town Wednesday for a series of interviews with the college board, area business leaders, and faculty and students from the college.

What Hoffman and that school in Colorado did, he explained, was secure a partnership in which Goodyear and the state technical education division each put up about $200,000 for new training equipment.

That equipment ended up being used not only by Goodyear to train current and new employees but also by other local companies such as Frito-Lay and Hill's Pet Nutrition (maker of Science Diet pet foods).

Hoffman tells that story as an example of the kind of collaboration that can happen between a technical college and the local business community, that "can make us each greater than the sum of our parts."

That example, he said, is an example of how technical education has been changing the past few years.

"The old model would be to tell a company, 'Our welding class starts in August,'" he said. "Now, you ask, 'What do you need? Do you need MIG or TIG (types of welding)?' 'How many?' 'When?'"

Following a tour of the campus, Hoffman said he was "very impressed," and noted he'd visited the campus when he was vice president of Northwest Kansas Technical College in Goodland in 1998 -- before several new buildings were built on the campus.

"What you've done here since then is very exciting," Hoffman said.

Besides being vice president of the technical college in Beloit, Hoffman has also been a teacher in Rocky Ford, Colo., was director and CEO of Kaw Area Technical School in Topeka, and is currently director of secondary to post-secondary education at Washburn University.

The other finalist for the position, Greg Goode, is vice president of student services at the Community College of Aurora in Colorado. Goode will be in Salina today for the same series of meetings and tours Hoffman had Wednesday.

During several of those meetings, participants were asked to complete survey forms, asking about what they saw as the candidate's strengths.

Those surveys will be read by the college's board of trustees. The trustees expect to meet next week to discuss the applicants, and their timeline calls for a decision next week, as well.

The college is in the process of becoming independent from the Salina School District and becoming a free-standing college. The trustees approved the college's first associate degree programs in late January.

Though, if selected, he would be the new college's first president, Hoffman said he doesn't see the college as a blank slate.

"It's not entirely new," he said. "The school is here, the programs are here, and there's already good work toward (accreditation.)"

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by e-mail at mstrand@salina.com.

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