News
State Board of Higher Education holds meeting at local college
Scott Wagar
06/25/2013
The State Board of Higher Education met at Dakota College at Bottineau on Thursday, June 20, and discussed a variety of items concerning the university system.
However, the main focused was on naming an interim chancellor to replace the present chancellor, Hamid Shirvani, whos contract was bought out in May when the State Board of Higher Education met behind closed doors and made the decision to relieve Shirvani of his duties.
During the board meeting in Bottineau, the State Board of Higher Education voted to make Bismarck State College president, Larry Skogen, as the university interim chancellor.
Skogen is expected to be the temporary chancellor until the new chancellor is hired, which is expected to take place this summer.
DCB
When it came to Dakota College at Bottineau, one item on the board’s agenda that concerned DCB was an amendment on Minnesota-North Dakota reciprocity for the university system’s colleges.
However, Dr. Ken Grosz, dean of Dakota College at Bottineau, stated that DCB has so few Minnesota residents that the amendment didn’t affect the college.
“It really won’t affect us at all because of the few number of Minnesota students enrolled at DCB,” Grosz said. “This past academic year, I believe we had nine Minnesota residents enrolled with us in all delivery methods, some of which includes online and face-to-face on campus.”
No other measures were discussed by the board that affected the local junior college directly.
“We did not have any new program or building requests for the board to consider,” Grosz said.
NDFS
The North Dakota Forest Service made a request in the board agenda to “authorize NDSU-North Dakota Forest Service to proceed with construction of the nursery freezer and shop facility at Towner State Nursery in the amount of $785,000 to be funded from 13-15 state appropriated capital assets funding,” which was approved by the board.
“We greatly appreciated the State Board of Higher Education’s approval of the construction project at Towner State Nursery. We are fortunate to receive the board’s support and the new funding from the legislature for North Dakota Forest Service programs that serve the citizens of North Dakota,” said Larry Kotchman, state forester of the North Dakota Forest Service.
“This year, the late spring season caused serious delays in lifting and shipping trees to our nursery customers. The new freezer storage facility will ensure that we have adequate supplies of seedlings available when our customers need them regardless of the weather conditions at Towner State Nursery,” he continued.
Kotchman added that the nursery freezer will focus on critical freezer storage needs for the forest service’s tree seedlings and that the shop facility will provide a heated facility and will replace the former building which was constructed over seven decades ago.
“The North Dakota Forest Service owns and operates the 160-acre conifer tree nursery. Each spring, the nursery harvests approximately one million bare-root seedlings, but lacks adequate storage for the seedlings. The project increases freezer storage capacity from 120,000 to 500,000 trees. The project constructs a new steel building 50 feet wide and 160 feet long with a concrete floor. The building will contain a freezer storage unit (50’ x 110’) and a heated shop (50’ x 50’),” Kotchmand said.
“Freezer storage facilitates fall harvesting of seedlings to avoid winter injury, increases production, improves species availability, and allows for earlier spring seedling shipments to meet customer needs,” he continued.
“The Nursery Freezer and Shop Facility will mechanize freezer storage for trees using fork lifts and pallets containers. Freezer tree storage fosters the consolidation of services and enhances operating efficiencies.
“It facilitates fall harvesting of seedlings redistributing the workload from the busy spring season to the fall,” Kotchman continued to state. “A heated shop provides for servicing, reconditioning and fabricating specialized nursery equipment. The new shop will replace the nursery’s current shop which was constructed in 1938.”
Grosz stated the State Board of Higher Education meeting was productive on DCB’s campus.
“I felt the meeting went very well,” Grosz stated. “Our physical plant and food service operations worked very hard readying the campus for the meeting. The meeting attendees made numerous comments about the appearance of the campus and also about the beauty of the Turtle Mountain area and the progressiveness of the city.”