(Estherville)– Iowa Lakes Community College and several area high schools will benefit from a grant announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The grant funds are to be used to improve educational services in rural areas or improve acceess to health care through the USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine program.
Officials with Iowa Lakes Community College says it will allow them to improve communications at all five campuses. It will also provide video access to college level courses for nine area eligible high schools.
The entire project has a price tag of nearly $1 million. The $498,695 USDA grant requires a local match. The grant will go before the college’s Board of Trustees for official acceptance at their meeting this coming Tuesday.
Area high schools that would benefit include Algona, Armstrong-Ringsted, Clay Central-Everly, Graettinger-Terril, Harris-Lake Park, North Sentral Kossuth, Ruthven-Ayrshire and West Bend-Mallard.
The grant outlines targeted courses which will be included for each of the schools participating. They range from Intermediate Spanish and Human Anatomy and Physiology to Introduction To Sustainable Energy and College Physics.
Officials with Iowa Lakes Community College say one of their goals is to pursue more offerings in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. That’s in addition to marketing workforce development credentials, certificates and diplomas and degrees as distance learning course work throughout Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Kossuth and Palo Alto counties.
