Opinion: New vision arises for old MTI campus

In 2000, when Chris Paustian first laid out the vision for a new campus for Mitchell Technical Institute just south of the interstate, the elegance and strategic purpose of the plan hit you like a revelation. The need for and advantages of the idea were just so clear once made manifest.

What was stunningly less clear was just how one would go about building a whole new campus for MTI. Campuses cost money and lots of it and neither a huge bank account nor a statewide commitment were anywhere in sight. It is to then Director Paustian’s credit, in fact, that he was able to lay out such a vision with no concrete way to turn a potential campus into a real one.

But it is sort of hard to remember that these days. We had barely torn the ‘sanitized for your protection’ labels from the bathrooms of the phase 2 MTI building and the new Energy Training Center building (wow, dirt floors are ‘in’ again!), completed in time for school to start last fall, before the dirt began flying for the MTI Foundation student apartments and, now, the soon-to-be iconic Student Services Center. It is hard to believe that once these two buildings are completed—with enormous help and leadership from both the State Board of Education and state Career and Technical Education Director Mark Wilson — MTI will be only one building away from completing its new campus. MTI, not coincidentally, has secured its new campus faster than a United States Marine takes a beachhead.

Which has led some of the more contemplative sorts in town to wonder aloud just what will happen to the old MTI campus.

Funny you should ask.

While what follows is only a vision for the future, nothing yet approved by board motions or employee decisions or other actions that actually make such things a reality, I do think it is a vision that makes a lot of sense. Once MTI has moved all of its operations from its current main campus to its south campus, the next best move will be for the Mitchell School District’s K-12 operation to take possession of those buildings and to open a regional Career and Technical Education Academy. For those of you who don’t have to keep up with all the name changes that education is constantly making, career and technical education (CTE) is the new term for vocational courses, which, if I remember correctly, was the new name for such things as wood shop and home ec.

But the new terms, at least in this case, do have some meaning. They refer to the fact that CTE courses need to be articulated with courses found in the technical schools so that they can lead quickly to postsecondary study and well-paying careers. Thus, the transition from our current situation to the regional CTE academy should see several steps or changes.

First, we need to move our CTE courses — Agriculture, Foods, and Natural Resources; Health Science; Human Services; Hospitality and Tourism; Business, Management, Administration and Finance; Transportation Distribution and Logistics; Architecture and Construction; Manufacturing, and Information Technology — into new and much improved digs at the former MTI main campus. The greater space and better technology will dramatically enhance these programs.

Second, we need to fully articulate these course clusters with their successor programs both at MTI and the state’s other technical institutes so that, if students chose to do so, they can be immediately ‘plugged in’ to the next step in their pursuit of a career and a bright future. This may also mean dual credit courses which allow high school students to begin their postsecondary classes before even graduating high school. We are extremely fortunate in having such a close relationship with MTI — the Mitchell School District encompasses both MTI and the K-12 program—because it makes the establishment of such articulations and dual credit classes logistically simple.

Third, we need then to open our doors to other schools in the region so that their students can take advantage of these courses as well. The onetwo punch of school revenues not keeping up with school expenses in our state and the critical shortage of certified teacher applicants in many CTE areas has all too often resulted in the elimination of many CTE courses in school district after school district. The problem is especially critical in smaller schools where student populations simply won’t support more than one or maybe two CTE courses. Budgets can’t indefinitely keep up with vocational agriculture courses, for example, serving 5 or 6 students per class.

A solution to both this problem and an educational advantage even if the problem didn’t exist is a regional CTE academy, where class sizes are sufficient to support the necessary faculty and courses lead seamlessly to courses at MTI and the other state’s technical institutes, programs with high levels of career placement and good-paying jobs.

That’s the vision. Now let’s see if it proves to be prescient or just a pipe dream.

Tags: joe graves, opinion