ILCC President Reflects Upon Her Upcoming Retirement
ILCC President Reflects Upon Her Upcoming Retirement
January 19, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Estherville)– Val Newhouse is looking back on her tenure as President of Iowa Lakes Community College as she prepares to retire later this year. As we reported earlier, the college’s board of trustees Tuesday accepted Newhouse’s retirement resignation, effective this coming June 30th. Newhouse tells KUOO news she has a lot of mixed emotions…
“Certainly it’s a bitter-sweet decision. I’ve worked at Iowa Lakes for 30 years and 13 of them in this position, and not an easy decision to make. But you know once upon a time someone told me you’ll know when it’s time and I believe that, you know, it’s time for me. Professionally we are in excellent shape at the college, so the transition will be really, really, nice. I won’t be handing somebody over a lot of headaches. We’re fiscally sound, programming is good, our facilities have never been in better shape, and there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for the new president coming on board to make some changes as he or she would like to do as well. So I think it’s a great time professionally to make this transition.“
Newhouse says she’s extremely proud over the development and growth of programs during her tenure, adding there are a number of new opportunities on the horizon. She specifically mentioned a $1 million grant Career Academy Grant that was awarded to the Spirit Lake campus…
“That’s going to be a really nice program to offer in Dickinson county for four other school districts that are sending students at this point, and I anticipate there will be more for different career opportunities while they’re still in high school. I see more of that where we can help students experience and explore different CREPT opportunities while they’re still in high school so that they know more what they want, what they don’t want to do when they graduate from high school, and I see more work in the apprenticeship area. We’re just, you know, touching on the tip of that and so I believe we will have more opportunities to work with apprenticeship moving forward, and of course, continuing to fine tune and make sure we’re offering the highest level in academics that we possibly can.”
Newhouse says she plans to spend more time with family and will do some traveling upon her retirement. A search for her replacement is getting underway immediately. Newhouse has been President at Iowa Lakes 30 years, serving the last 13 of those as President.
