WASILLA -- Mat-Su Borough Mayor Talis Colberg is among the four finalists being considered for the position of Mat-Su College director.
Four-year college director Dennis Clark retired at the end of June. A search committee made up of University of Alaska Anchorage and Mat-Su College representatives is inviting the community to meet the final four contenders at four open forums planned this month, beginning with one from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at the college cafe. That forum will feature Colberg.
It's not clear whether Colberg would have to cut his mayoral term short if he was selected to head the college. He was elected twice in 2009 to the office of Mat-Su mayor, the first time during a special election to fill out the remaining months of former Mayor Curt Menard's term. It is a largely ceremonial office and his term as mayor expires in 2012.
"It's really up to the university (to say) what kind of conditions they want to put on it. My preference would be to finish the term and let it rest at that," he said.
Colberg said his duties as mayor may change anyway. Mat-Su voters in October will consider whether they want to change the mayor's job from a ceremonial position to a strong mayor, in which the mayor acts as a manager of the borough.
If he secured the college directorship and voters made the mayor's job full-time, he said he would step down as mayor.
"I have to put the priority on my career in the long run," he said. "The mayor is not a long-term position ... and this is a career path opportunity. I just didn't feel I could pass the chance to do this."
In addition to Colberg, University of Alaska Anchorage is considering three others: current Alaska Health and Social Services Commissioner William Hogan; former Klamath Community College director Fred Smith, who is now the program director and instructor for Tillamook Bay Community College and Klamath County School District; and Kent State University Stark professor of marketing and current American Association of State Colleges and Universities senior fellow Betsy Vogel-Boze.
Hogan will be at a community forum at the college cafe July 16; a forum for Smith is scheduled for July 19; and a forum for Vogel-Boze is planned July 21. All forums are scheduled for 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Boze might be familiar to Alaskans from her role as chair of the University of Alaska Anchorage Business Administration Department and associate marketing professor in the early 1990s.
Colberg said his history with the college on Trunk Road in Mat-Su spans two-thirds of his life. While in high school he took a class there and was a math tutor. He estimated he's taught more than 2,000 students at the college in the four Eastern and Western Civilization courses he's been teaching regularly since 1992.
In that time, he said he has watched the campus grow from a single building to a bustling four-building complex and transform from a place where middle-aged students took an occasional class to finish a degree or learn something new to a campus where recent high-school graduates begin their college careers.
"I love it there. I've actually been there long enough that I've had a second generation of families (attend classes)," he said.
Colberg said he envisions the campus becoming a four-year institution and would like to be part of that transition.
Colberg is a worker's compensation hearing officer for the state, a job he took not long after he stepped down from his appointed position as state attorney general under former Gov. Sarah Palin.
Find Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 907-352-6709.
By RINDI WHITE
rwhite@adn.com