M State President Dr. Carrie Brimhall, Alumni Association president Josh Hansen and Melvin Whitney, director of advancement and development, flank the Harvest Maple tree planted on the Moorhead campus for its 20th anniversary. (Photos/Nancy Hanson.)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
Faculty, students and friends of M State joined Dr. Carrie Brimhall Sept. 28 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the four-campus system that became Minnesota State Community and Technical College in 2003.
It was one of a quartet of parallel events, with others held on campuses in Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls and Wadena. Dr. Brimhall observed that she has been aboard throughout the entire two decades of serving 157,101 students, beginning in 1998 as an administrator and serving in a variety of roles before being named M State’s president in 2018.
“Over the past 20 years, we have grown to serve more than 14,000 studnets and learners every year,” she said, citing a combination of on-campus, online, televised and blended courses, as well as concurrent courses for high school students and a variety of non-credit courses and training. M State’s mission, she told guests, is “to specialize in affordable and exceptional education, service and workforce training. We welcome all students and engage them in shaping their futures and their communities.”
M State, she said, has been ranked as the best community college in Minnesota (WalletHub, 2019); the fifth best college in the U.S. (Learn.org, 2019); and among the Aspen Institute’s biennial list of the top 150 community colleges in the U.S. every time since its inception.
She was joined at the podium by Moorhead city councilman Chuck Hendrickson, alumnus Josh Hansen and Melvin Whitney, director of advancement and development and an alumnus himself.
The Moorhead campus began its life in 1965 as Moorhead Vocational Technical Institute. It joined schools in Bemidji, East Grand Forks and Thief River Falls to become Northwest Regional Technical College in 1992. The board of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities voted to create a single new regional community and tech college in west central Minnesota in 2003, joining colleges here and in Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls and Wadena into the multicampus two-year college known as M State.
Today M State offers more than 70 career and liberal arts programs. It also provides 500 business and industry partners with workforce development services and other training programs.
