NORTHPORT – A former corporate retreat and conference center on Ducktrap Mountain is being eyed as the location for Founders College, a private liberal arts college seeking authority to operate in Maine.

The state Board of Education has formed a committee to review plans to establish the college at the former MBNA Point Lookout center overlooking Penobscot Bay.

During its meeting in Augusta on Wednesday, the board appointed five distinguished Maine educators to review the request from Founders College of North Carolina for degree-granting authority to award Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees at the new college.

Gary Hull, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, is the chairman and chief executive officer of Founders College. Hull said Thursday that obtaining the state license to offer degrees was a critical first step in the process. He also said the college was negotiating to purchase the Point Lookout property.

Other than describing the college as being “like any of the other private liberal arts colleges in the country,” Hull said he preferred not to discuss the details of the college proposal until the licensing situation was resolved. Under Maine law, institutions of higher education must hold a state license before they can issue degrees.

“There are a lot of ifs, and one of the biggest is the licensing,” Hull said by telephone from North Carolina. “Until we get over this licensing hurdle, there’s not much to say. … Right now, there are too many imponderables.”

Hull said that Founders College has been in the planning stages for years and that sites in Virginia and North Carolina were also being considered as a possible location. He said the other locations were similar to the one in Northport in that they all provided “a typical, private, secluded and safe environment.”

Point Lookout was built by MBNA in the late 1990s. It sits on about 400 acres on Ducktrap Mountain and is now owned by Bank of America, which purchased MBNA a year ago. Bank of America put the conference center on the market shortly after the merger with MBNA. The property has a price tag of $26.4 million. It has conference halls, residences, food service buildings, athletic fields, fitness center, gymnasium and would fit “perfectly” as a college, Hull said.

Hull said the neighboring communities of Belfast to the north and Lincolnville Beach and Camden to the south were the “crowns of the midcoast” and would provide an ideal environment for the college. He said the coastal setting would make any institution an attractive place for prospective students and faculty.

“It’s the perfect college-town type setting,” he said. “Perfect for what the students want and perfect for what the staff and faculty want.”

Appointed to the review committee were William Beardsley, president of Husson College; Jill N. Reich, vice president for academic affairs and dean of Bates College; Mark Lapping, interim president of Unity College; Theodora J. Kalikow, president of the University of Maine at Farmington; and Patricia Vampatella, dean of academic affairs at Central Maine Community College in Auburn. James Carignan, chairman of the Maine Board of Education and Harry W. Osgood, higher education specialist with the Maine Department of Education, will serve the committee as nonvoting participants.

Attempts to reach Carignan and former Maine Speaker of the House of Representatives Michael Saxl, the attorney for Founders College, were unsuccessful.

The committee has tentatively scheduled a site visit at Point Lookout for June 14. Hall said that if everything falls into place, Founders College would open in fall 2007.