Northwest Aerospace News December 2018 | January 2019 Issue No. 6 | Page 43

IDAA SPOTLIGHT
“North Idaho College has been a
trailblazer in leading students and
the community in entrepreneurial
thinking and action,” Corbin said. “By
creating strategic partnerships in the community
and with local industry, the college is building
new and innovative pathways to economic vi-
tality in the region. It is a pleasure to recognize
this outstanding college, which was selected by
an independent judging panel, as the winner of
NACCE’s 2018 Entrepreneurial College of the
Year Award.”
North Idaho College is becoming a regional hub
of entrepreneurial education and support. A myr-
iad of partnerships, programs, and efforts kicked
off in the past year and still more ideas are in the
works. “We’ve talked about a rapid-prototype
lab,” Arnold stated, “There are a lot of ideas
around products, but there aren’t a lot of spaces
to actually develop those ideas. We’d like to
expand on the makerspace we have and add
some high-value tools.” Providing these tools
and fostering the pool of available talent to run
them are the connections North Idaho College is
trying to bridge.
Entrepreneurs and established manufacturers
alike share the problem of finding skilled tech-
nicians who can make their products a reality.
NIC’s entrepreneurial push stands upon a foun-
dation of recent investment targeting industry
workforce needs.
Collaborating with the Idaho Aerospace Alli-
ance, and the departments of labor at both the
state and federal level, NIC received a $2.97
million grant in 2012 that added aerospace-re-
lated manufacturing training and an aircraft
maintenance program to the college catalog.
In this image: Aviation Maintenance student Gavin Klein
instructs teens on riveting during a two-day
ACEAcademy summer event.
Further responding to the shortage of available machinists, welders, and other tradespeople, in 2015 the NIC board of
trustees approved $15 million from the college’s reserves to fund a 110,000-square-foot trades facility in Rathdrum, Idaho.
A local fundraising campaign brought another $5 million to the project providing equipment and student scholarships. This
new facility, the Parker Career and Technical Education Center, opened in Fall 2016 greatly improving the capacity of the
ten programs housed there. Strategically located next to the related training center that serves area high school students,
the benefits of shared equipment, space, and curriculum have evolved quickly.
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