NICC President: Agriculture classes are an important part of what we do

NICC President Dr. Liang Chee Wee

NICC President Dr. Liang Chee Wee says he sees the school's agricultural classes as serving an important function for the area. 

The community college has gone from offering two agriculture-related degrees to offering eleven such programs.  Enrollment in the classes continues to increase.  "We want to give (our students) every reason to stay in Northeast Iowa," says Dr. Wee.

A central part of that mission is the Iowa Dairy Center, located just south of the rest of the NICC campus.  The Dairy Center has just broken ground for a robotic milking addition that will handle 120 cows.  "This is a teaching farm, this is a working farm," he says of the facility.

The Dairy Center is also a tourist attraction--and Wee predicts that will become even more the case when the robotic milking station is finished.  The project will include a viewing area where tourists can watch the robotic milking system in operation.

NICC dairy science instructor David Lawstuen says the robotics addition should be finished in early August--in time for student use during the fall 2013 semester.