By Presidential decree some 23 years ago, April was designated as National Community College Month. The United States is fortunate to have extraordinary post secondary educational opportunities including two-year, four-year and graduate level experiences. The U.S. system is unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The community college system in Iowa is particularly envied because of the geographic accessibility, the comprehensive nature, and the uniqueness of each individual college that allows the system to respond directly to regional needs.

The Indian Hills’ 10-county region is one of the largest of Iowa’s community college districts geographically. It uses two main campuses located in Ottumwa and Centerville as well as eight county seat centers to serve the area in Appanoose, Davis, Jefferson, Keokuk, Lucas, Mahaska, Monroe, Van Buren, Wapello and Wayne counties. Indian Hills also partners extensively with four-year collegiate colleagues to bring additional opportunities to the area.

Your community college - Indian Hills - is truly comprehensive. Of its approximately 6,000 credit students, half are enrolled in arts and sciences transfer classes and half are in technical programs that will prepare them directly for the workforce.

Approx­imately 90 percent of the Indian Hills’students come from the 10-county area, and 70 percent of those students will remain in the 10-county region to work and to help drive the economy. Nearly 90 percent of Indian Hills’graduates will stay in Iowa. These statistics are particularly important in light of the fact that rural populations continue to decrease in Iowa.

Our merged Area Education Region, which now includes four counties that stretch to Burlington as well as our 10 counties, lost more than 500 school-aged children last year. Indeed, the Indian Hills’10-county area lost more than 300 school-aged children a year during the three previous years. These numbers are an ominous sign that can be reversed by providing a trained workforce for prospective employers and by encouraging entrepreneurial ventures that will spawn new jobs and, in turn, give young families a reason to return to the communities that we love so much.

Aside from the nearly 50 technical programs that address direct workforce needs, Indian Hills partners with area employers and new businesses to provide training and funds for new worker and incumbent worker training. During the past 10 years, this training has created 4,000 new jobs in our region and provided $22 million in training funds to area employers. This next month alone, we hope to make nearly $4 million available to area employers like Barker Company Ltd. in Centerville, Harper Brush Works and The Sky Factory in Fairfield, John Deere Ottumwa Works and Winger Contracting in Ottumwa, and MUSCO Sports Lighting in Oskaloosa to train new employees.

This year, we will also celebrate the birth of our new Rural Entrepreneurial/Leadership Institute (RELI). This Institute will host activities that will help spawn new businesses and provide leadership training and assistance for existing entities, both private and public, that need help developing new leadership in their organizations. This center, along with the completion of our new Rural Health Education Center, which allows us to graduate nearly 1,200 health professionals a year, will help address critical issues in all of our communities.

Each of the above activities along with the traditional day-to-day college activities on our campuses gives us all good reason to celebrate National Community College Month.

As always, we very much appreciate the support from our communities as we at Indian Hills dedicate our work to serving you and being the best COMMUNITY College that we can be.