Flathead Valley Community College grew two different arms of its campus last week, expanding its occupational trades programs with a donation from Plum Creek Timber Co. and launching a new honors program that will offer 20 high-achieving students full tuition scholarships.
“This is part of FVCC taking steps to become a college of choice, not just here, but in the region and the country,” FVCC President Jane Karas told a group of professors and staff last week at an event launching the college’s new Scholars Program.
The goal of the Scholars Program is to provide a more rigorous academic selection for high-achieving, motivated students. The college is accepting applications for the program now, and will admit its first class of 20 students this fall, though Ivan Lorentzen, the program’s director, said that number might grow in the future.
Each of Scholar Program’s students will receive a full-tuition scholarship and a renewable stipend.
“Given economic conditions, we hope this will be very attractive to those transfer students who want to use FVCC as a jumping off point to four-year colleges and universities,” Lorentzen said.
FVCC’s Scholars Progam is designed to offer students a seamless transition to either the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana or the Honors Program at Montana State University. University of Montana, which requires seven honors classes as part of its program, has already agreed to accept up to five of those classes as transfer credits from FVCC. Lorentzen said he expected a similar agreement with MSU.
In addition to helping students transfer into other honors program, FVCC’s Scholar Program will make students more competitive for scholarships at those institutions. Program graduates will receive special designations on the college transcripts.
The Scholar Program will consist of about a dozen courses, with one offered every semester on a rotating schedule. The courses will be a combination of any two of the traditional academic disciplines – humanities, social science, math, science and fine arts – and will be taught by a team of two instructors. For example, Lorentzen said next year’s scholar schedule will include psychology through literature and medical ethics.
Scholar students will also be assigned a faculty mentor to help them through the program.
For the past 17 years, FVCC has held a lecture series in conjunction with a course at the college as an honors option. “But offering one course a year just wasn’t going to cut it,” Lorentzen said.
So for the last three years, a group of professors and school officials have met nearly every week to plan and develop a more expansive program, drawing on their counterparts at UM and MSU for direction.
The college renovated space to house the program inside the Business and Social Science building. At the end of one wing, a classroom stands out from the rest: a large wooden bookcase covers one wall; new furniture is arranged in a seminar-style environment; a technology center will cover another wall. Outside, there’s a lounge area and library.
“Bringing students into a room like this, I think there’s an expectation of behavior, of a higher level of thinking,” Lorentzen said, noting that almost all of the work was done by students and instructors from the college’s occupational trades programs like carpentry.
That department received its own boon last week when Plum Creek donated $60,000 to the college to enhance existing occupational trade programs and also loaned some heavy equipment for use in the classes.
Enrollment at FVCC has jumped more than 20 percent this spring as laid off workers have returned to school for retraining – often in the occupational trades sector. This month the college added a number of late-starting classes in courses like welding and heavy machinery operation to meet demand.
As a result, the college is in need of new equipment and funding.
“We’re pleased to help the college put some members of our community, and even some of our former employees, back into productive jobs in the community,” Hank Ricklefs, Plum Creek’s vice president of Northern Resources and Manufacturing, said. Plum Creek has laid off workers in recent months in Northwest Montana as a result of the slumping wood products industry.
Plum Creek’s donation will expand classes in heavy equipment operating, electrical technology, welding, furniture and cabinetry and building trades, while the loaned equipment will help supplement work in those programs.
“We’ve taken some steps not every community college does – especially in the state of Montana,” Karas said of the continuing advancements at the school.