NTC-Bemidji could co-locate to BSU

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 10, 1996

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

The campuses of Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College-Bemidji, which have coexisted since the 1966-67 school year, may soon be co-located.

Co-location would involve the re-location of the NTC-Bemidji campus onto the current BSU campus. However, the two institutions would remain separate entities with separate administrations, Northwest Tech President Ray Cross said.

NTC-Bemidji would remain part of the five-campus technical college system by which it is administered. Wadena, East Grand Forks, Moorhead and Detroit Lakes are the other four NTC sites. And the changes would not affect BSU other than the sharing of facilities, BSU President Jim Bensen said.

According to Cross, the idea did not achieve a great level of importance this past session in the state Legislature. However, he said the idea will "more than likely" come to fruition.

"We have to be patient, yet resourceful," Cross said. "It's time will come."

Cross said he believes it will happen because NTC-Bemidji badly needs money for remodeling its current facilities. He said the infrastructure of the building does not accommodate the needs of the school. For example, students needing to get to one lab in the school must choose either to pass through another lab room or go through an instructor's office.

"We call it our land-locked classroom," Cross said. "It looks like a maze to get into a classroom at times."

Simultaneously, BSU's Bridgeman Hall, which houses its industrial technology classes, has been outdated for more than 15 years, Bensen said.

Because of the needs of both institutions, Cross and Bensen said they believe the co-location is the correct solution.

Efficiency is the main advantage to both institutions, both presidents said. Cross said NTC-Bemidji would become more efficient because the schools would not have to duplicate the student affairs processes and the schools would not duplicate their industrial technology resources. He said there would also be better articulation between the two-year degrees offered at NTC-Bemidji and the four-year degrees offered at BSU.

"It would be an outgrowth of the faculty working together," he said.

Bensen said both institutions would benefit because there would be no need for two bookstores, two libraries or two financial aid offices. He also said BSU would benefit from the increased use of the student union.

"They would start using our facilities, and we would get more traffic," he said, "making our facilities more efficient."

But for now, the plan is on hold. In 1994, the state Legislature awarded the two institutions $300,000 in planning and pre-design money, which Bensen said has been used to produce the proposal, which costs between $20 million and $30 million.

"We did not make the bonding list this round. That's the frustrating part," he said. "The reality is that we've done all we can with the pre-design money."

The committee in charge of the pre-design work produced a master academic plan for BSU which detailed the services and facilities the two schools could share and demonstrated how the two institutions would still remain separate entities while raising their efficiency. This plan was then sent to the Legislature.

The two schools already have a history of sharing resources," Bensen said. For instance, there is an articulation agreement between the schools' nursing programs. Students can achieve their associate licensed practical nursing degrees at NTC-Bemidji, and transfer to BSU to earn a bachelor's of registered nursing degree.

The two schools also have reached an articulation agreement for their industrial technology programs. And, of course, NTC-Bemidji students have historically earned their liberal or general education requirements at BSU.

"It would be a win-win situation," Cross said. "The students win, and the taxpayer wins by eliminating the duplicated costs."