Southeast Community College has big plans for Agriculture Career Center

BEATRICE – Southeast Community College has big plans to ramp up its program in agriculture careers, with a planned Agriculture Career Center at the south side of the Beatrice campus.

SCC officials gave a presentation to the Gage Area Growth Enterprise Board of Directors Thursday, about a center that would include classrooms, labs, precision agriculture and technology space, hands-on training opportunities and an arena that could be used for college competitive rodeo and other community uses.

SCC Dean of Agriculture, Welding and Transportation, Jon Kisby says a private capital campaign to raise funds was started this year. The SCC Board will soon consider approval of the program, which would then go before the Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education for approval early next year.
"We want to be early next year on their agenda for approval on that....continuous schematic design and construction beginning hopefully next year, for an early 2025 opening day."

Several facilities that would be part of the project would have access from U.S. Highway 136, in the area of the current agriculture hall building that formerly served as the Beatrice Business Campus.  SCC several years ago established a master plan for its campuses, and several new building projects have been completed or are in progress at Beatrice, Milford and Lincoln.

Kisby said one feature of the new ag campus proposal is a greenhouse facility.  "We really don't have the ability to do greeenhouse type activities in the depth of the coldest part of winter right now, because of the way our facilities are designed....so this would allow us to hold those classes and those classes would be effective during that time frame."

It would also include a cattle confinement facility, meat processing area, a horticulture and turf grass lab area, swine and grain handling facilities.

The NGage Board viewed a fly-through presentation showing a concept of what the upgraded Ag program facilities would look like.  Beatrice Campus Director Brett Bright said the college would like the arena facility…designed to seat 800 to 1,100…to also serve the general public.  "It would be my vision to bring as many attractions as we can....from western shows to soil contests, to Four-H, college FFA, rodeo events....we could even do concerts. We want to make it a community space, because the more we can bring in the community the more it helps everyone."

Kisby says the Ag campus program is being designed with the assumption of a 50-percent enrollment increase in the program. He says larger lab spaces would accommodate today’s agriculture.  "These are large lab spaces. Agriculture equipment gets larger every year....and years ago, we outgrew the current spaces that we have for doing that. This would be an ag shop and ag and horticulture shop for smaller equipment....mowers and things along those lines....as well as an outdoor demonstration area."

The college is in phase two of its facilities upgrades….which also includes a construction careers building in Milford, welding and information technology career facilities in Lincoln. It has also built several new residence halls.  

Kisby says the Ag Career Center planning began during the Covid outbreak, slowing the process somewhat.  "We developed a plan for an agriculture career building that is anticipated to have about 47,000 square feet of educational space and animal handling....and another 53,000 square feet of arena and support space."

The overall cost of the project is estimated at between $22 million to $24 million.  Southeast has been using a combination of capital construction funds, private fundraising and naming rights to help develop the new facility spaces.