Some of the fastest growing jobs in North Dakota are in technical fields, and that hasn’t escaped the notice of Minot’s educators and community leaders.

While talk of the need for a post-secondary technical education center in Minot is nothing new, conversation has heated up recently due to both job demand and seed money from the city’s $74.3 million grant from the National Disaster Resilience Competition. An estimated $1.8 million of those funds could become available to get a training center started.

Minot is the only one of North Dakota’s four largest cities without a career and technical center in its community or backyard, said Steve Shirley, Minot State University president and a proponent of bringing technical training to Minot.

“We are really missing the boat here on some educational offerings,” he said. “An all-of-the-above strategy is important for post-secondary education. Not every student should be looking at a bachelor’s degree.”

After his appointment as president in 2014, Shirley visited with the chancellor at the Board of Higher Education about including a career and technical center in MSU’s capital improvements budget. The 2015 Legislature did not fund the project, but the vision remained.

When Minot was generating ideas to include in its entry in the National Disaster Resilience Competition, Shirley brought the technical center to the table. The center was included in the proposal and funded in the $5 million portion of the grant award that also includes a new city hall and co-located social service agencies.

Minot Mayor Chuck Barney said the city and its consultant, CDM Smith, have reached out to MSU, Dakota College and Minot High School to open discussions about the next step in utilizing the resilience grant to create a technical center. That next step is to identify the needs in the community and determine the types of programs that a center should offer.

Barney said some programs require considerable investment. For instance, a diesel mechanics program is expensive to initiate and operate. Expense could be a factor in the type of programs offered.

Nursing training already provided in the community could be incorporated into the technical center, along with new training for other allied professions, such as training emergency medical, pharmacy or laboratory technicians.

When it comes to training in the trades, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 714 and United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 300 in Minot both recently built new training facilities.

“We have made accommodations in our program,” business manager Randy Bartsch with the IBEW said of meeting the demand. “We have about 130 apprentices we are training right now in Minot.”

There are dozens of other technical education opportunities that aren’t available in Minot, though.

“If you have people who want that sort of education, they leave the area, and they never come back,” Barney said.

CDM Smith now is reaching out to economic development and employer groups to find out where the needs are for technically trained employees.

Shirley said MSU’s existing partnership with Dakota College at Bottineau creates a vehicle by which Dakota College could expand its one- and two-year technical programs into Minot. There are cost advantages to working with an existing program. If Dakota College cannot serve as a conduit, MSU could choose to seek partnerships with other state colleges.

“With our relationships with other two-year colleges, we can help to facilitate that,” said Jerry Migler, campus dean at Dakota College. “We have quite a bit of expertise in CTE (Career and Technical Education). It doesn’t mean we have all the programs that need to be offered but we can help bring those in.”

Allied health careers and the trades continue to be pressing needs, Migler said. He conceded many programs are expensive because of the type of equipment and sometimes space required.

“That’s the nature of a technical program because if you want students to have skills so they can be ready for job entry, they have to practice and they actually have to learn on the equipment they will be using,” he said. “If you want to replicate the kinds of experiences that students are going to see when they go to a business, a manufacturing site, you try to replicate that site as much as you can. In some places they have worked out arrangements for doing training on a job site.”

Dakota College has that kind of relationship with Trinity Health with its nursing program. That program could be a model for a post-secondary CTE training center in Minot, he said.

“Partnerships with the businesses are going to be critical,” Migler said. “What I have seen around the country, the most successful programs really are partnerships with businesses and industry. Those partnerships can take a lot of forms.”

It can be financial support, lending of clinical sites, donated equipment, part-time student employment or reimbursement of student tuition upon hiring graduates. One business partner in a program he previously worked with sent its engine warranty work to the school, Migler said. Auto repair businesses also can provide machinery or vehicles that students can examine or use in training on diagnostic systems.

“There are so many ways to work with businesses and industries. I think it really is just a matter of being able to bring the appropriate industries and others together and talk about what are your needs and what are we able to do collectively and collaboratively,” Migler said. “The ultimate goal we are looking at is to provide the community with a front-line workforce. I view what we are doing is we are helping economic development for the community. One of the questions that potential businesses ask is, ‘What is your workforce like?’ Just knowing that they have that ability to have that skilled workforce or an entity that can help provide the training they want, it actually is a pretty big deal.”

Years ago, it was possible to get certain types of training on the job. Now most businesses want to have a workforce already trained. The U.S. Labor Department states that by 2020, 60 percent of the workforce is going to need post-secondary training. Only about a quarter may need a bachelor’s degree, leaving a strong niche for the technical schools and community colleges.

More people going to technical schools after having been in the workforce for a while, Migler said.

“They are just not at a point to take off and move to another community. If there are some of these opportunities available locally, they would reconsider and maybe go back and get some of the training and retool themselves to go into one of these front-line occupations,” Migler said. “There are a lot of things that are coming together in Minot that would provide a great opportunity.”

Funding and location are two hurdles that must be scaled to capitalize on any opportunity.

Shirley said model centers exist in other communities that provide examples of corporate partnerships that serve as sources of funding. A corporate partner providing funding could be assured access to a certain number of graduates.

As for location, Shirley said the original idea in MSU’s proposal to the Legislature was to build a new building at the north end of the parking lot north of the Dome. Having an on-campus center creates ease for students in taking classes both through the center and through MSU’s university program.

However, the resilience program is looking at incorporating a technical center into the revitalization of downtown. An exact location hasn’t been identified.

Pam Stroklund, Career and Technical Education director at Magic City Campus in Minot, suggests it may be most cost effective to establish an administrative office downtown but utilize existing training and business space for classroom activities. For instance, Magic City Campus could make facilities at its Northwest Technical Center available in the summers when high school students are on break. A dental office might want to make its facilities available after hours and weekends.

“With this technology center, we have to think outside the box. We have to be flexible,” Stroklund said. “With only that much money, there’s going to have to be some creative thinking to get it here.”

Quentin Burdick Job Corps Center also might be able to provide facilities, depending on federal approvals that would have to be obtained and finding suitable time frames when Job Corps students aren’t in classes, said director Lyn Dockter-Pinnick. Regardless of how the Job Corps might partner in a post-secondary center, the Burdick center wants to contribute.

“We absolutely want to be part of the process,” Dockter-Pinnick said. “A function of Job Corps is to meet the labor market needs of the community.”

Although there is no timetable for launching a technical education center, the clock is running. Barney said the resilience grant money must be spent within six years of being awarded. The grant was announced last January, leaving just over five years left.

If the technical center runs into feasibility issues and can’t come together in that timeline, it can be removed from the grant projects. However, even if the city can’t be a partner with its resilience grant, that wouldn’t necessarily kill the idea for a new center.

“It’s really about a vision,” Shirley said. “I think the vision will continue regardless of whether we can partner – and we certainly hope we can.”