Charles City’s NIACC staff move to Union House as career center construction continues

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Work on NIACC’s new career center expansion is coming along well, with walls going up over the last couple weeks and interior work underway.

“They’re making great progress,” said NIACC President Steve Schulz. “I hate to say it out loud, but it looks like they’re a little ahead of schedule.”

In the meantime, building staff has moved over to temporary offices at Union House, where they are working to prepare for the upcoming fall semester. Signage still needs to go up, but the phone lines have been redirected and staff are on hand to serve community education needs.

“Wendi [Coen-Ward] will be there and she is ready to serve clients,” said Schulz. “We can serve whoever needs to be served.”

NIACC scheduled an abundance of time to get the career center expansion completed, planning for it to be ready for the 2024 fall semester. Schulz said he hopes enough of the building will be complete that students will be able to tour the facility ahead of time.

“We’re hoping to get some students in there before they register for fall so they can see exactly what it’s going to look like,” he said.

The career center is will serve high school students from Charles City and six other area school districts – Riceville, Osage, Nashua-Plainfield, Clarksville, North Butler and Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock. It will offer classes in four areas identified through Iowa Workforce Development job opening reports for this area – advanced manufacturing, construction, information technology and health care.