Red Lake Nation College Shares New Plans At Open House

“The environment is awesome, the staff is friendly, classes are unique,” says Wesley Jourdain, the student government president at Red Lake Nation College.

Red Lake Nation College opened their doors today to let potential students know exactly what they’re about.

“We’re open to the public, so anyone can attend here. You don’t have to be just a Red Lake tribal member or native, which are most of our students, but anybody is welcome to attend here,” says Dan King, the president of the college.

“What we’re hoping to provide here for students is an engaging atmosphere where students attend not only their classes, but they can come and work out; they can come and bring their children too while they’re attending classes,” says Nokomis Paiz, the vice president of student success.

Right now, the college offers an associate of arts degree as well as an associate of applied science, not to mention a GED program. Their classes are all based in culture.

“Any way that we can incorporate the language, the culture, the art into our courses, we’re definitely always striving to do better with that,” says Paiz.

The college is also hoping to expand. Right now, that means focusing on adding student dorms that they hope will be complete by the fall of 2021.

“The plan is to get funding to have 250 bed dormitory right here, lakeside views,” says Paiz while pointing to the field in the back of the college. “So that we can serve tribal members and non-tribal members who live out of the area so that we’d have more recruiting capacity there.”

After a student’s time is up at the college, they’re encouraged to soar to their next steps in their education.

King says, “We don’t want them to just get a two-year degree and then stop. We want them to get a two-year, four-year, masters, doctorate, professional degrees and then come back and help the reservation.”

In addition to the dorms, the college is also hoping to add new certificate programs as time goes by.