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Courtesy Vermilion Community College
Vermilion Community College
Vermilion Community College, in Ely, Minnesota, sits on 80 acres, half of which is a forest used in training in outdoors-focused programs.
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Courtesy Vermilion Community College
Vermilion Community College
Vermilion Community College attracts students from across the Midwest for its natural resource programs and its locale in Ely, Minnesota, beside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
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Phil Bencomo / Lake Superior Magazine
Lake Superior College: New Campus Construction
Lake Superior College’s downtown Duluth campus, in a space once used by a now-defunct publishing company, will expand the school’s manufacturing offerings. Pictured here in December during construction, it’s scheduled to open this year.
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Courtesy Gogebic Community College
Gogebic Community College
Students in Gogebic Community College’s ski area management program operate Mount Zion, a small ski hill on campus in Ironwood, Michigan.
A few miles up Highway 53 from the Duluth Harbor, Lake Superior College has some of Duluth’s finest views, a strong academic reputation and one of the lowest tuitions in the state. That combination has led to a level of success that points out one thing the college doesn’t have: enough space.
Demand for seats in some burgeoning technical programs, like welding, has grown to unprecedented levels, and LSC has turned away dozens of students every semester in recent years because of space limits.
Says Jenni Swenson, dean of business and industry at LSC, “We’re just so cramped.”
Across the bridge in Superior, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College received a federal grant last fall to expand its own welding program.
Community colleges around the Lake Superior region share a common ability to educate students specific to local workforce needs. For many students, these work-specific programs make the most sense – and make the most of their dollars – for post-secondary education.
LSC will respond to its growing needs by … growing. It will open a new downtown campus this year to host courses for manufacturing students, in addition to some general education classes.
Jenni and others at LSC spent about a year scouting locations that met their requirements – a large industrial space, easily accessible by bus – and ultimately settled on a building in downtown Duluth. Gary Kruchowski, director of public affairs and advancement at LSC, says that the college hopes to have 100 students at the new campus in the fall.
The space – once a printing facility – will be a boon for the integrated manufacturing program, whose current facility lacks the square footage for additional students or new equipment. “We knew that we had the student demand,” says Jenni, “but we knew we needed a better facility.”
“In our current space, we only have room for eight welding stations,” Gary says, “and I think we have the opportunity to expand double or even quadruple that, as far as the demand for the training.”
That demand, Jenni and Gary say, comes from regional manufacturing, construction and mining companies that are losing skilled tradesmen to the North Dakota oil fields or to retirement. Duluth-based Cirrus Aircraft has advertised job openings with a prominent billboard not far from the LSC campus.
The extra room also means Lake Superior College can offer training for Haas Automation, a company that makes popular manufacturing equipment. The company’s machine tools require specialized training and plenty of room, so Haas works with educational institutions across North America. “When they have new equipment, we’ll be a training center,” Gary says.
“It’s also a continuing education opportunity for people who have used that equipment,” adds Jenni.
This year, Lake Superior College will unveil community partnerships that use the new facilities, including what LSC calls a Fab Lab devoted to fabricating prototypes and reverse-engineering parts. The school already has much of the equipment, including a 3-D printer, but it will be gathered at the new campus into one space dedicated for development and experimentation. The college plans to partner with independent manufacturers to create prototypes.
The new lab opens another opportunity. “We’re also partnering up with K-12 schools, so the students will get a feel for tinkering in the Fab Lab,” Jenni says. The goal is to spark the kids’ creativity (with literal sparks) and to launch the next generation for local manufacturing.
Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, is one of the few schools in the United States offering a degree in ski-area management. According to director Jim Vander Spoel, it was the first program of its kind in the nation. Today, graduates of the school’s management program are coveted from coast to coast.
“In the late ’60s, we had a natural resources program,” Jim says, but job placement was low. “Being located in the heart of ‘Big Snow Country,’ the president said maybe (skiing) is something we should look into.”
In 1968, the college acquired additional property in Ironwood that included the Mount Zion ski area, which receives upwards of 180 inches of snow annually. In 1971, the two-year program was born. The capstone is an internship at a ski resort, for which the students prepare by running Mount Zion.
At 300 vertical feet, Mount Zion is one of the region’s smaller ski hills. “Pretty much every kid in the area learned to ski here. … Then they end up graduating to the big hills,” says Jim. In a way, that’s true of the ski management students, too: Mount Zion is where they learn snowmaking, trail grooming and equipment maintenance before they leave for their internships and careers at major resorts.
It’s a “working laboratory for the students. They’re doing everything, it’s all worked into the program,” Jim says.
Enrollment is capped at about 20 students per graduating class. Most are from the Midwest, but students have come from as far away as New Zealand.
The program is decidedly not a two-year ski trip. In the winter, classes start at 8 a.m. and end at 1 p.m., after which the students run Mount Zion until close. Evening snowmaking and grooming labs sometimes last until 2 a.m.
Jim, himself a graduate of the ski management program in the ’70s and a member of the Midwest Ski Areas Association board, teaches the classes with a few other instructors.
Most ski management students start the Gogebic program already having worked at ski resorts.
“My average age right now is between 20 and 21,” says Jim. “Most of them one day would like to run their own ski area. A lot of their bosses tell them that if they want to get into a supervisory position, they have to go to school.”
Jim’s oldest student is 52. “It’s a second career for him, something he always wanted to do.”
Scott Hurban, a 27-year-old second-year student from Wayland, Michigan, lived and worked in Vail, Colorado, for four years “and fell in love with the industry,” he says. “And my boss was a graduate (of the Gogebic program) and kind of, not pushed, but suggested I go if I wanted to advance quickly in the industry.”
Even with his previous experience, Scott says much of the coursework has been new to him. He’s learned everything from summertime trail and equipment maintenance to risk management and the nitty-gritty of resort finances.
“I always thought I’d be more focused on snowmaking, but when we got working on lifts, it really made me want to be a more well-rounded individual than working on one thing, and hopefully I’ll be working in a mountain manager position.”
Running Mount Zion can be stressful, “but they trust you with all that expensive equipment and it really gives you a lot more confidence.”
Some Gogebic ski management graduates continue their studies through a partnership with Northern Michigan University in Marquette, which offers a bachelor’s degree in ski area business management. Most, though, get right to work. Jim’s placement rate has long held steady at about 98 percent.
“People come from all over the country looking for our graduates,” says Jim. “Washington, California, (and Colorado ski resorts) Keystone, Vail, Steamboat, Breckenridge… Just about anywhere you want to go, I can probably place you.”
Says Scott, “If someone loves the ski industry and plans on doing it for the rest of their life, they should do it. It’s a great program.”
Vermilion Community College, in Ely, Minnesota, on the doorstep of the international border, bills itself as the “Boundary Waters College.” Conservationist Sigurd Olson was one of the college’s early academic deans, from 1936-47, and his educational philosophy of hands-on learning and field observation remains embedded in the institution like the roots of the towering pines in the north woods he loved.
“Our best laboratory is the 200 acres of federal wilderness that surround our campus,” says Shawn Bina, provost at Vermilion.
Over the years, Vermilion’s academic programs have come to reflect its environs, with nationally recognized programs in natural resources management, preservation and recreation. A full third of the school’s 600 students are pursuing general associate degrees and chose Vermilion for its location, says Shawn.
That’s a significant change from the college’s original charter as Ely Junior College in 1922, to educate the children of miners and loggers on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Vermilion is now a “very non-typical community college,” Shawn says. “Our average student comes from over 100 miles away. … As time passed through the ’70s and ’80s, the college needed to make a niche for itself. You weren’t going to have the same population base to serve students. So we made the decision to focus on natural resource management.
“For a time it was hard for the community to say, ‘Is it really our college?’ We’ve really made an effort in the last decades to rebuild that relationship.”
For Ely, a town of 3,460, the 600 residential college students could easily be overpowering. Instead, “we really worked hard to have a college that blends into the environment and the town,” Shawn says, which extends even to the unassuming wood-sided campus buildings. Throughout the year, students volunteer in the community with everything from park cleanups to hanging Christmas lights.
“Service-learning projects have really helped the community see the value. It’s been a journey, but I’m very comfortable with where we sit today.”
Vermilion’s offering that debuts this year is an environmental technology degree. “It’s a broad degree about field sampling for air, water and soil,” with training in sample analysis and environmental rules and compliance, says Shawn.
The school’s recently revamped degree in water-quality science could take on special significance if the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine opens in nearby Hoyt Lakes. A recent governmental study of the project estimates water treatment there would be needed for hundreds of years. “(Environmental technology) students can work in a whole host of industries,” says Shawn, “from environmental management to mining to waste management. All of those industries are looking for those skills.”
Vermilion is also one of 12 schools in the nation certified for park training by the National Park Service. That program continues to be a strong draw for the school, along with degrees in wildland/wildlife law enforcement and wilderness and park management. Nearly a dozen rangers, including the Voyageurs National Park district ranger, have worked with students.
In the neighborhood of Voyageurs and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate place for such training.