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Beloit College tabs interim president

BELOIT — A health industry executive from Minnesota will take over as interim president of Beloit College on June 1.

Dick Niemiec, a recently retired senior vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, will assume the interim leadership of the 1,300-student liberal arts college.

Niemiec will succeed John Burris, who announced March 6 he would be stepping down.

Niemiec is a 1965 graduate of Beloit College and recently was elected to the Beloit College Board of Trustees.

A mathematics major as an undergraduate, Niemiec did graduate work in statistics at the University of Missouri.

After a brief teaching stint in Chicago, he joined Honeywell in Minneapolis as a systems analyst. In 1973, he began a 33-year career with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota that culminated in his appointment as senior vice president for corporate affairs in 1986, according to a Beloit College news release.

Niemiec is vice chairman of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Foundation and of the international Kobe College Corporation. He also serves on the boards of the Tubman Family Alliance, working to prevent family violence in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Board of Trustees Chairman James Sanger said the board hopes to select a new Beloit College president beginning in the 2009-10 academic year.

Niemiec will take up residence on the campus in the coming weeks with his wife, Joan Gunther Niemiec, a former member of the Minneapolis City Council.