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NIC hires new VP for finance and business

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NIC hires new VP for finance and business

After nearly four months of vacancy in the wake of Ron Dorn’s retirement, the Vice President for Finance and Business position has been filled.

The open vice presidential position went to Chris Martin, who was selected from 72 applicants total. Martin started in his new position on July 1.

Martin said he started his career working with higher education institutions as a banker, and worked with institutions of various sizes. After the recession, he was offered a position at a college he had worked with. He acquired a bachelors degree in accounting and finance from Abilene Christian University, and an MBA from Amberton University.

Before coming to NIC, Martin served as the vice president of finance and administration at the Whichita Area Technical College (WATC) in Wichita, Kansas.

“It was more heavily focused on the career and technical education side, heavily involved with aerospace,” Martin said. “That’s really what drew me to NIC; the new Aerospace Center for Excellence.”
Martin said that WATC had interaction with NIC, and that he took interest in the recent developments with aerospace programs at NIC.

“I love the outdoors. I grew up kayaking and canoeing, and so North Idaho as a general area had been on my radar as- ‘man, if there was ever a chance to get to be in this part of the world, that would really be something I’d be interested in,’” Martin said. “The fact that there was an opening, and that it was an aerospace institution as well, really piqued my interests.”

Martin said the administration was another draw because of how fresh it is.

“There’s a fairly good administration here as a whole. None of the vice presidents or the president have been here an extremely long time, so it’s a really unique opportunity to come here and work where there’s a really new team, and everyone’s still developing their roles here,” Martin said.

Though Martin grew up in a small town, he said he had spent most of his time living in urban environments. The community of Coeur d’Alene and NIC was another drive for him to seek the position, as well as the NIC Foundation.

“For a college our size to have the level of support that we have, and have as strong of accommodation as we have, that was pretty unique,” Martin said. “With a Foundation that strong there’s no doubt the community support is there for the institution.”

For the future Martin said he wants to develop a long range plan to help the college succeed as an institution by keeping track of fiscal plans and track investments being made.

Martin said that NIC has a lot of buying power that he’d like to see put to use, and that the college has a sizable budget and is a large institution for its area.

“We haven’t really harnessed the buying power that we have as an institution, so I’m looking forward to working across the campus with all the players,” Martin said.

Having just gained reaffirmation with its accreditor, Martin said he thinks that now is a good time for NIC to be looking at what it wants to be in the future, where it wants to be, and to refocus on what the institution wants to accomplish.

“What does that next season of the college look like, and how do we best plan for its future?” Martin said. “I think the key there is looking at how we budget, and making sure it’s transparent, but beyond that we’re really looking at how we’re investing our dollars today for the future of the college.”

In regards to the Career and Technical Education building proposal, the Joint-Use building proposal and the student recreation center proposal, Martin described this as an “exciting time”, and that one of the things that most impressed him was the education corridor and the work that has been done there.

Martin is married with a daughter, and his wife is a school teacher. Martin said that he is “very excited” to be in Coeur d’Alene.

The vacancy was created after the retirement of Ron Dorn at the conclusion of the Fall 2013 semester.

Near the beginning of the year 30 candidates were vetted for the position, but only one candidate was left for the final round, prompting NIC to seek more applicants. Martin was chosen from four final applicants that participated in open forums.

I am the current News Editor of The Sentinel, and in charge of creating the News section of this paper and assigning the stories covered in it.

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