Moving&shaking

McCandidate

Scott McNall, Chico State University’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, is a hot commodity. In recent years he’s come close to landing top jobs at universities in Missouri, Illinois and Maine.

Now, rumor is that he’s on the short list for the presidency at Humboldt State University (my alma mater, by the way, and the previous place Chico State President Manuel Esteban worked).

“That would be nice if it were true,” said McNall, when I tracked him down on the way to a campus meeting. “I think it would be a really interesting and wonderful job.”

“I was nominated by people here [at Chico State] and there [Humboldt],” he said. “I was very flattered.” While McNall confirmed he’s in the running, he said he wouldn’t know if he was among the finalists until at least Feb. 18.

He said it was too soon to talk more about the potential move, and state university spokespeople felt the same way.

Sean Kearns, the director of university communications at HSU, referred me to the CSU’s public-information person, Colleen Bentley-Adler, because it’s actually the Board of Trustees that’s doing the searching.

“At this point we are not releasing any names,” Bentley-Adler said. That will change in a few weeks, when five or six semi-finalists are chosen and they go to HSU to be interviewed. “We hope to be able to name somebody at the March 12-13 Board of Trustees meeting,” she said. Current HSU President Alistair McCrone is retiring effective July 1.

Junior Alex P. Keatons

Those SIFE students are at it again. This time, the Students in Free Enterprise teams from both Chico State University and Butte College are putting forth the entrepreneurial spirit via a camp for students aged 9 to 13.

The young capitalists will meet on five Saturdays, beginning Feb. 16, at Chico State, where they will participate in a project called “Wise Kid, Wealthy Kid.” They’ll learn how to think creatively in starting a moneymaking business “rather than by relying on someone else to give them a job,” explained the team’s executive director, Allison Steltzner.

On the last day of the camp, they’ll tote their wares to the International Trade Fair at Acker Gym and sell them alongside older entrepreneurs.

From sheep to knitting

Other youths in the thick of things include the Butte County 4-H members, who are converging on the Silver Dollar Fair Grounds from 4 to 9 p.m. for a fund-raiser on Saturday, Feb. 2. There will be food, carnival booths and a silent auction.

“It’s the biggest fund-raiser for Butte County 4-H,” explained Nick Bertagna, the new program representative and publicity guy for the group, which operates under the University of California’s Cooperative Extension program. (Bertagna was a member when he was a youngster, so he knows of what he speaks.)

He said it’s a chance for the community to come out—for only $1 admission—and learn what the club’s 750 members are doing, from the traditional raising of livestock to the less-recognized woodworking and textiles projects.