SIOUX CENTER—Northwest Iowa Community College held an open house at its Career Academy building in Sioux Center Thursday, March 27, showing off the former Northwest Area Education Agency building after extensive remodeling to better host its courses.
The building was purchased by NCC in March 2023 to serve as the home for the college’s Career Academy, a statewide program that is advertised as a means of allowing students to explore career paths while earning high school and college credit. One of the major benefits of taking Career Academy courses is that there is no tuition cost associated with enrolling for its programs and can result in earning industry recognized certifications.
NCC began with four courses of study, called pathways: education, engineering, health care and welding. Since then, a fifth pathway has been added: information technology.
Remodeling work began about a year ago. According to the NCC Career Academy and exploration coordinator Brenda Sandbulte, the former AEA building was a blank slate for the college, with an open interior – cubicles were used to divide workspaces.
“We have eight total new classrooms with a welding facility that’s in a building that’s behind the Career Academy to the east,” Sandbulte said. “We will have two computer labs, one that’s for the IT pathway and one for the engineering programs so it can do CAD. We’ll have offices for staff as well as a lobby area and offices that instructors will be able to use.”
Some work is still continuing, however, with the remodel in its touch-up phase.
Remodeling work was done in phases so that classes could continue at the building during the school year.
“We were using a conference room for some of our math classes, and I also teach a work-based learning class where we just ended up jumping to the IT lab,” Sandbulte said.
With the new class rooms finished, it was time to welcome the public to check out the building and what it has to offer as the Career Academy.
“I have given some individual parents and students tours, they’ve been very gracious and can see what the potential is here,” Sandbulte said.
High schoolers and their families came to the open house to see that potential for themselves as the students plan ahead for their college prospects and future careers.
Adriana Gutierrez is a sophomore from Orange City who went to check out the Career Academy with her family. She was interested in learning more about the Career Academy’s health care pathway. At this time, she is interested in becoming a radiologic technologist or certified nursing assistant.
“I went to Scrubs Camp last year and heard about NCC. I went to the camp and they had a lot of hands-on stuff to see where you possibly might want to go. I came back here today to get a little more in depth on what I might want to do,” she said. “Junior year is pretty serious and you have to find out what you want to do. I wanted to come here to see what classes and things I need to do to prepare myself for next year. I like that they offer a bunch of classes for high schoolers so they don’t have to pay so much when they go to college.”
Josiah Draayer was a Boyden-Hull High School sophomore who attended the open house to look into starting with the Career Academy next year. He’s interested in becoming an educator, potentially getting into elementary education. At this point, he’s exploring all his educational options.
“I learned about this from school. It sounded like a good way to get a head-start on college,” he said.
A central location
Having a place for the Career Academy apart from NCC’s Sheldon campus allows for the program to provide a more centralized location for its Sioux County partner schools: Sioux Center School District, Boyden-Hull School District, Rock Valley School District, West Sioux School District and MOC-Floyd Valley School District.
“For example, West Sioux would never send its students all the way to Sheldon for classes. It’s just not feasible transportation-wise. It’s not practical. But West Sioux could send students to Sioux Center here,” Sandbulte said.
Career Academy courses have begun being offered at the Sheldon campus as well, however, providing an additional location that might be better suited for other schools. That being said, NCC at this time is providing three of the five pathways at its Sheldon campus with hopes to expand that.
“Now that the focus won’t be on facilities, we will be able to focus on opportunities,” Sandbulte said.