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State Senator Jack Kibbie Reception
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| State Senator Jack Kibbie |
State Senator Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg, was honored Thursday by Eastern Iowa Community Colleges (EICC) for his lifelong commitment to the state’s community colleges.
In 1965, Sen. Kibbie sponsored the bill to create Iowa's community colleges. During his tenure as an elected official in the Iowa House of Representatives, Sen. Kibbie has remained a steadfast supporter of community colleges. Kibbie, who was first elected to the Iowa House in 1960, is retiring at the end of the current legislative session.
Sen. Kibbie was recognized during a special reception hosted by EICC and also during an honors dinner at Scott Community College (SCC). (EICC includes Scott, Clinton and Muscatine Community Colleges.)
Speaking at the reception were EICC Chancellor Dr. Don Doucette, SCC President Dr. Teresa Paper and Bettendorf Mayor Bob Gallagher who officially declared April 26 as Senator Jack Kibbie Day in Bettendorf.
Sen. Kibbie told those in attendance a brief story of how the state community colleges came into being. At the time there were several junior colleges in the state, many of which were operated by the local public school districts.
He said the school districts no longer wished to continue operating the colleges and that many colleges had already closed by that time. To generate funding for them, Sen. Kibbie joined with other legislators to pass legislation creating community colleges with partial funding provided by the state. (Today, more than half of the colleges’ funding comes through student tuition with additional support from the state and local property tax. The local property tax is not set by the colleges and only occurs upon approval of the residents of the college district by public referendum.)
The legislation created 15 community college districts across Iowa, governed by local boards of trustees. The former junior colleges in each of those districts became a part of the newly-created community college districts.
In this area, Clinton and Muscatine Junior Colleges were then in existence and became a part of the larger Eastern Iowa Community College District. EICC acquired Palmer Junior College in 1979 to create Scott Community College.
In the 2010-11 college academic year, Iowa’s community colleges served more than 155,140 college and career technology students and more than 254,000 noncredit students. Last year, EICC enrolled more than 14,000 college and technical students and more than 55,000 non-credit students.
Iowa's Community Colleges are the workforce trainer of Iowa offering a wide variety of short-term and long-term credit and noncredit programs/courses to meet the needs of business and education in their local communities. Iowa's Community Colleges serve nearly 22 percent of Iowa's working population.