T-R FILE PHOTO - Welding is one of over 100 education areas listed among the Future Ready Iowa Last Dollar Scholarship career needs. These welding students at Marshalltown Community College demonstrated their skill.

A new scholarship through the state Future Ready Iowa initiative is set to help fund higher education in key areas and officials hope economic benefit will follow.

The Last-Dollar Scholarship was created when state lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds passed the Future Ready Iowa Act into law earlier this year. Over 100 eligible occupations were identified for the scholarship program based on statewide needs and job outlook.

Iowa Valley Community College District, as well as other community colleges across the state, were able to pick five additional training areas for the scholarship to focus on at the local level.

“As a college district, we reviewed this (scholarship) list in comparison to all our program offerings,” said Marshalltown Community College Provost Robin Lilienthal.

For many areas on the list, Lilienthal said Iowa Valley Community College District schools already offered a program. Nursing, for example, is listed as a Last-Dollar priority area and is already available for students at Iowa Valley.

The college officials decided upon their five additional career training areas they wanted to be eligible for the scholarship program: precision agriculture, automotive technician, business administration and management, certified medical assistance (CMA) and gunsmith technology.

Lilienthal said the state’s original list is “robust” but there were still some local needs that could be more specifically met with Iowa Valley’s five additions. She also said the state and district training lists are “high-stakes” for the local economy.

“I believe that our biggest challenge right now, and I am not unique in saying this at all, is we need a workforce,” Lilienthal said. “In most cases, the employers tell us, they need trained employees.”

She said it benefits local employers in manufacturing, health care, agriculture and more to have students ready to jump into the workforce right out of school. Those students are also set to see benefits if the scholarship program works as intended.

“In order to benefit from these scholarship funds, it will direct them into programs that show a good job outlook in terms of pay, openings, all those kinds of things,” Lilienthal said. “The employment outlook is good and needed for the state of Iowa’s economy. It really becomes this great cycle.”

Community colleges serve as one of the state’s largest job training entities, Lilienthal said, and the Last-Dollar Scholarship is meant to help strengthen the state’s economy. She said the list of jobs is not only important for current college students, but also for local high schoolers.

“This year for the first time we have the opportunity to offer concurrent enrollment classes to high school students during the summer,” Lilienthal said.

She said Iowa Valley offers dual-credit courses in the spring and fall semesters to local high school students. The difference with the new summer program will be that dual-credit students must be participating in a Last-Dollar Scholarship-identified field.

“That list has the double stakes with it,” Lilienthal said.

State officials have been promoting the Future Ready Iowa initiative since 2016 when then-Gov. Terry Branstad signed Executive Order 88 to create the Future Ready Iowa Alliance.

The initiative “focuses on helping more Iowans pursue rewarding careers and employers hire the skilled workers they need,” according to a statement from the governor’s office earlier this month.

The statement showed that 71 percent of Iowa high school graduates enroll in college or training programs within a year of graduation. It also showed that of those students, the number taking remedial math and English courses in the state’s public higher education institutions went down between the classes of 2011 and 2016.

That held true for students from racial and ethnic minority groups across the state, as well as those with low-income backgrounds and English language learners.

Local lawmakers have also said job training is a major need for the Marshall County area.

“We’re now faced with almost all of the helping professions … facing serious shortages,” state Rep. Mark Smith D-Marshalltown said in an interview with the Times-Republican earlier this month.

He said those professions include educators, social workers, nurses, pharmacists and many other service providers among the helping professions. He said the state’s public community colleges and universities are integral to filling needed jobs in Iowa.

Fellow state Rep. Dean Fisher, R-Montour, said Future Ready Iowa recommendations will figure into the coming 2019 legislative session.

“We’ll probably be acting on some of those recommendations,” he said. “Certainly, I’m going to be pushing to do well for the community colleges.”

One of the primary goals of Future Ready Iowa is to have 70 percent of the state’s workforce to have education or training beyond the high school level by 2025.

Lilienthal said community colleges are integral to developing those goals.

“We want to make sure we have super vibrant communities that both have great jobs and a great living experience so that it keeps our communities thriving,” she said.

For more information, visit https://www.futurereadyiowa.gov/