CEI officials open new Future Tech Building, ready for students this fall
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IDAHO FALLS — A years-long educational vision became a reality Thursday afternoon with the opening of the new Battelle Energy Alliance Future Tech Building in Partnership with Frontier Credit Union, at the College of Eastern Idaho.
The new, completed building, which EastIdahoNews.com will henceforth simply call the Future Tech Building, will be ready to serve students on Aug. 17, adding space for 1,000 more students. The building cost approximately $52 million, hosts 12 labs and 10 classrooms.
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The programs that will be taught in the Future Tech building are: Engineering, Cybersecurity, Surgical Technology, Digital Forensics and Analytics, Energy Systems Technology, Information Technology Services, Mechatronics Engineering Technology and the Battelle Energy Alliance Applied STEM Institute.
“This is just an incredible day for CEI, the community, and really beyond the state,” CEI President Lori Barber said.
Barber told EastIdahoNews.com that since the former technical college became a community college in 2017, the total student population has grown from as few as 1,000 to nearly 5,000.
She said that this new building is an example of how CEI is growing and expanding to serve its students as well as those high-tech programs.
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One of the more interesting changes was the surgical tech program’s transition from CEI’s main campus to the Future Tech building. Barber said this move is intended to increase enrollment in this program, as the need for surgical technologists in the area has grown.
“We were able to expand that program by about a third, and then that also allows us to be able to expand our medical assisting program almost double that in the space where SurgeTech vacated,” Barber said.
EastIdahoNews.com spoke with U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who said that new buildings at institutions like CEI aren’t new, but the education taking place in this building is a shift from the standard.
Risch said that at CEI, innovation is underway as students seek change and do things differently.
“This is a much more crafted education for the individual, and in a lane that there really hasn’t been the attention that there should have been over the years,” Risch said.
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Idaho Superintendent of Education Debbie Critchfield attended the ribbon-cutting and said that the building’s namesake is an example of the investments being made by the community and employers across the region.
“To have a facility of this caliber, that is bringing students to the programs that not only are part of what they’re interested in and what their goals are, but they’re directly aligned to workforce and industry needs,” Critchfield said. “That’s how you continue to sustain the future of this community.”
Before the ribbon-cutting, Gov. Brad Little addressed the hundreds in attendance, saying this is a big deal not only for CEI but for all of Idaho.
He said the future will depend on a skilled workforce capable of sustaining it.
“The days of people walking out of high school and kinda doing stuff and building up skills are long gone. It’s a career technical education that this facility will be part of that exists in our K-12 system,” Little said.
Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner began by talking about the new building; he said it is not only something the workforce needs but also offers the younger generation an opportunity.
“The opportunity to come here to get hands-on training and relevant skills for kids to pursue their passions… develop skills right now that frankly we need as a laboratory is moving,” Wagner said.
Wagner also discussed why INL’s involvement with the college isn’t anything new. In the past, staff at INL and CEI have collaborated to develop curriculum, teach classes and are directly involved with each other. This ongoing collaboration will now happen in one building.
The name of the building also serves as a symbol of where the future lies: not with the laboratory but in the classrooms.
“It’s a statement of where we believe our region’s future is,” Wagner said. “With dedicated instructors… who show up every day to prepare our next generation.”
Frontier Credit Union CEO Dan Thurman said the financial institution’s mission is to build better lives, and a project like this exemplifies that goal.
He said that investing in education is one of the greatest investments one can make that helps create new opportunities and open doors for people.
“The Future Tech Building will be will prepare students for careers in some of the fastest growing and most important jobs in this this state and in the country as a whole,” Thurman said. “Most importantly, it creates opportunities for those students to stay right here in Idaho to build their careers, raise their families, and contribute to the communities that have invested in them.”
