TORRINGTON – The Eastern Wyoming College (EWC) Board of Trustees Work Session was held Tuesday, March 12, in the EWC Dolores Kaufman Board Room at the college.
Chairman Van Mark called the meeting to order shortly after 4 p.m. and after a brief hello, Van Mark moved on to calling for a vote to approve the March 12, 2024, work session agenda. A motion was made, and the agenda was then approved.
The board then quickly moved on to making a motion to approve the February 13, 2024, work session minutes. A motion was made, seconded and the work session minutes were then approved.
Van Mark then called on Amber Holen, grant writer, for a report on grants and grant writing for EWC.
Holen expressed how having a study stream of grant revenue, mainly federal grants, could help support the administrative overhead at the college through indirect costs.
Holen has been the grant writer for EWC for the last seven months and she splits her time with GoGoshen, who helps support the writer position.
Holen, who was raised in Gering, now resides near Cheyenne, stated working alongside GoGoshen has been beneficial to her knowledge of the community.
“One of the things that I did want to share with you tonight is sort of some of the eternal things that are happening that are going to put EWC in a better position to be competitive for federal grants,” Holen explained. “One of those things is bringing in faculty and really getting a culture of grant revenue generation going with our facility. So, grant programs in high education there’s kind of two groups. We are talking billions of dollars a year of that the federal government funds in higher education through competitive grants. There are research grants and then there’s grants that are geared toward community colleges which are much more career education based. You do have colleges like LCCC in Cheyenne that do a really good job of going after both. They’re winning research grants that some huge four-year institutions are going for.”
Holen expressed EWC could focus on the community college grants and workforce developments.
“Another really great thing that EWC has going for it, is our agricultural things,” Holen said. “Just our geographic position puts us in a competitive position for USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) grants that other community colleges in our state would kill for.”
Holen expressed she submitted grant proposals in other academic area such as the National Endowment for Humanities for leveraging the relationship between EWC and the different archaeological and historic societies in the area. Holen also expressed she had also submitted another grant with the help of Dr. Steven Howard, the new professor of archaeology and anthropology as well as health care and health care education grants.
“This is one of the biggest grants that we would apply for the Department of Labor Pathways to Infrastructure. This is a part of the Biden – Harris bipartisan Infrastructure JOBS Act the largest bit of federal funding legislation ever passed,” Holen explained. “If you control for the value of the dollar, it’s bigger than any new deal program in the 40s. I mean, it is huge. Billions and billions of dollars, over ten years, regardless of who’s elected in this in this presidential election. That legislation has passed it’s in effect we’re going to be seeing it roll out and improve communities for years to come if they apply for the grant funds to do so,” Holen continued.
Holen expressed under current legislation, there are a lot of programs for community colleges, such as pathways to infrastructure, which LCCC brought to EWCs attention.
“It’s through the Department of Labor and this is one that the LCCC actually found and brought to the Wyoming Community College Commission,” Holen said. “We have a meeting every two weeks. The grant writers for all the community colleges this was presented as a consortium grant so that means all the community colleges would come together as a group and apply for a huge sum of money and then share it in doing different projects at their campuses.”
Dr. Jeffry Hawes, EWC President, explained how difficult it can be to find leadership for the grant and he expressed EWC continues to move forward.
“This is really good stuff for us as an organization and it’s a huge growing phase thinking about next steps and I’m very impressed with our people inside the college. They’re stepping up trying to figure out how to look at some of these new things while their deals some of the challenges of still fixing some of the things that they had to work through for several year,” Hawes expressed.
Van Mark added grant funding spent back into the community is money well spent.
“I think the beauty of this as well is this makes our, not just our county of Goshen, but all of our counties that we reach out Crook, Weston, Niobrara, Platte and even Converse, it makes them more viable and economically stable because we’re bringing in people to Douglas with these grants for bringing people into the Torrington campus with these grants,” Van Mark said.
After a brief discussion with Holen, the board moved on to a business development center update by vice president John Hansen.
“So today it’s my pleasure to talk to you a little bit about the business innovation center, as an idea, as a concept,” Hansen said. “The reason why we’re bringing this to you is just to talk about bundling these sources so that when we’re approached by businesses public/private partnerships or entities that are interested in combining force-college with that might look like.”
Hansen explained his background in opening and operating a career services center.
“The point is this though, what that experience taught me about running career center thinking about people, thinking about students, we have to do a better job of education institutions in connecting to employment,” Hansen expressed. “Colleges, like I said, are like really good at educating but they’re really poor at ensuring that people have internships and connected the industry and what are you going to do with it.”
Hasen views a relationship between EWC and the workforce to provide additional opportunities for the community.
After a brief discussion on the possibility of a business innovation center, the work session was adjourned shortly after 5 p.m.
