UPDATE: The regents removed the GBC merger agenda item from the meeting. TMCC’s president also got a one-year contract extension.
Elko-based Great Basin College could become a college within the University of Nevada, Reno. The presidents for both institutions are scheduled next week to discuss what the merger of the two institutions will look like.
GBC last year expanded the merging of services with UNR. A special meeting of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s board of regents July 21 will have both campus presidents discussing the consolidation.
Regents last year went to great lengths to avoid calling the merger of services between the two institutions a “merger.” The regents instead referred to the consolidated services as “a strategic alliance.”
GBC President Joyce Helens at the Sept. 8, 2022 meeting said a merger would never occur.
“We have never considered a merger, nor would we,” she claimed.
Now, however, a complete consolidation of the institutions is being considered, with GBC being a college within UNR, and the words consolidation and merger now in quotes.
“President Joyce Helens and President Brian Sandoval will discuss the details of what the ‘merger’ or ‘consolidation’ of their institutions will entail and entertain questions and discussion from Regents regarding details of any such merger or consolidation,” the meeting agenda notes. “Consolidation would preserve the GBC name/identity and rural mission.”
The meeting agenda claims the merger would preserve GBC’s identity.
“Both institutions have been in contact with our accreditors and the U.S. Department of Education to further answer questions that would continue our efforts towards a full consolidation where GBC, while maintaining its identity and mission, would become a college within UNR, sustaining the GBC legacy of providing higher education and training opportunities to rural Nevada,” the agenda notes.
Merger plans will be brought back to the regents in the spring of year.
The board of regents meeting is July 21 at 9 a.m.
The regents will also consider a contract extension for Truckee Meadows Community College President Karin Hilgersom.
One TMCC faculty member called the request by Hilgersom a “misleading retirement gambit.”
“TMCC President Karin Hilgersom [is] asking the Board to grant a one-year extension of her current contract, which ends on June 30, 2024, and to waive the periodic evaluation that is conducted for all presidents prior to contract renewal,” said Jim New, Hilgersom’s prior vice president of finance. “Hilgersom appears to be using the policy to exercise a form of workplace extortion. Give me what I want and I’ll go away. Don’t give it to me and you’ll have to deal with me for another four years.”
New’s comments come in the wake of years-long controversy over the president’s tenure at the community college.
“The Regents first priority must be the welfare of the college,” New added. “We must make them understand that the campus community will have no confidence in a leader who so clearly wishes to leave, but will do so only on her own terms.”
