Students and faculty from the welding program were given a new option for relocation at the board of trustees meeting March 13.
By June 2016 the welding program will have to be moved to a leased facility or the proposed building.
The relocation of the welding program does not come as a surprise to the staff of the training center since NIC has already extended their lease multiple times.
“A decision will need to be made at least two years prior for the proper preparations to be made,” said Director for Workforce and Community Education Marie Price.
Dean of Professional, Technical and Workforce Education Mike Mires said the company, Outotec, has been very nice to work with. They have extended NIC’s lease for many years, but they need the property that NIC leased for expansion.
“For a program that I would say has great status in the trades area, we seem to move it too much, especially for what I would call one of our star programs,” Mires said. “We should have a home for it.”
Mires said there are a couple possible options for the replacement of the training center and a more permanent option is desired by the staff concerning the relocation.
“Its the most expensive program ever to move and we keep trying to find temporary places for it,” Mires said.
Jacklin Seed Products made an offer to lease NIC a place for the new training center and to also absorb some of the retrofitting costs for the welding program.
“This arrangement is temporary at best,” Mires said.
Jacklin is offering NIC at least a five year lease and the estimated cost for NIC is around $40,000 a year, without the retrofitting costs.
“The one thing about a lease is one day you are going to have to move,” Mires said.
Mires idea for the relocation of the training center is to create a permanent home for the welding program. For NIC to build a new facility from the ground up will cost as much as $2.4 million in construction costs, but it would be a permanent solution.
“The cost for a temporary solution would be less expensive but by the time we would have to move the welding program again it would probably cost that much,” Mires said.
Mires said that the welding program is a self-support operation and with the proper planning and delivery it tends to bring some money back to NIC. The revenue created by this program would come directly back to the college.
The permanent solution would also open up the possibility of hosting non-credit training for companies that want training in the trades areas. Not only would this be a great use of the space but it also has the potential to bring back revenue for the college, Mires said.
Another great use of a new training center is to potentially use it for NIC’s aerospace program.
“We could reconfigure the training center to offer a number of things that right now we just can’t deliver,” Mires said.
The new training center that has been prosed is designed to accommodate the same amount of students that it currently supports, with the possibility of an additional 10 more students.
“We are running almost 60 students through the program every year. If we had more room we would run more. It always has a waiting list,” Mires said.
“It will allow some expansion,” Mires said. Most of the expansion will be to accommodate non credit courses training and NIC could provide a lot of that to companies if we had the place to do that.
