-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Darius Brown, a freshman Iowa Central student from St. Paul, Minnesota, swipes his keycard to gain access to his resident hall. Iowa Central’s security and door locks update is wrapping up.

Despite the wrench COVID-19 threw into the plans for Iowa Central Community College in 2020, the college still had a successful year refinancing general obligation bonds, finishing a new central building on campus and keeping all the other programs running.

In October, the long-awaited Greehey Family Student Success Center opened. The building, for which ground was broken in 2018, houses veterans services, enrollment services, student advising, financial aid, registrar, counseling, housing, career services, distance learning, early intervention support and the campus mail room, all in one facility.

Previously, those services were housed in various buildings around campus.

“Everything that deals with the students from when they first get here through when they graduate, we’ve been able to consolidate all of those services into one facility,” said former college President Dan Kinney.

Kinney told The Messenger he hoped that by having all of these student services under one roof, the college can better serve its students for all their needs.

“Definitely our first-generation students, they tend to lean on our staff a lot more because sometimes they don’t have those resources and the ability to ask their family members or parents at home,” he said.

A large portion of the $8.5 million project was donated by its namesake, Fort Dodge native Bill Greehey, who gave $3 million to the project. Greehey graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School in 1954 and immediately enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He eventually became the chief executive officer of Valero Energy Corp. for 26 years.

Kinney said he was inspired by the Haven for Hope, a 23-acre campus that provides full services for San Antonio’s homeless population that Greehey created in Texas. He said he saw how having all the essential services the clients needed all in one place really helped their success.

Kinney shared his gratitude to Greehey for giving back to Fort Dodge and the Central Iowa region.

“Honestly, this dream of mine would not have happened without the support we received from him, his wife and his family foundation,” he said.

The rest of the cost from the project came from the $25.5 million general obligation bond issue approved in February 2018 by the voters of Buena Vista, Calhoun, Greene, Hamilton, Humboldt, Pocahontas, Sac, Webster and Wright counties.

The bond issue allowed the college to sell up to $25.5 million in G.O. bonds. Previously, $16.5 million of those bonds had been sold. In November, the college sold its remaining $9 million of bonds to two underwriters.

The bonds will fund other projects around Iowa Central’s campus, including renovating and remodeling the former Student Services Building, which was vacated by departments moving to the newly-completed Greehey Family Student Success Center.

In May, Kinney told The Messenger the “most important” project the college was wrapping up at that time was the college’s safety and security project, which included installing additional lighting, updating cameras and replacing the exterior door keyed locks on all buildings with electronic keycard locks.

“As a college president, if we were to have an incident happen in our campus, we could easily, through this one program, lock the whole campus,” Kinney said. “All the exterior doors, getting into the residential halls and all the buildings can be locked at one time to go into a lockdown quicker than we would have ever been able to do that.”

The main focus of the Iowa Central Board of Directors going into 2021 is to find a replacement for Kinney, who stepped down at the end of December after accepting the college president position at Iowa Western Community College.

“This has been probably one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make,” he told The Messenger. “I’m at a great institution — Iowa Central Community College is an amazing institution, and Iowa Western is an amazing institution. The final decision really came back to being with family.”

Unlike when the Iowa Central Board of Directors hired Kinney 11 years ago, it will not be using an outside search firm, board President Mark Crimmins said. Crimmins and other board members were involved with that search and feel that they can undertake the task themselves this time, saving the expense.

“We’re getting applications from all over the United States,” Crimmins told The Messenger in early January.

Once the applications are closed, the board will begin to cull through the submissions and start initial interviews in March or April. After those interviews, the board will select finalists to interview again in April or May. The board expects the next president to begin in July or August.

“We’re looking for someone who can run the college, can work within the community, has experience with business and industry, things like that,” Crimmins said. “The thing with Iowa Central, or any community college, is that it’s more than just what happens on campus and in the classroom.”

The board is asking the surrounding community for its input in the process for choosing the next president of the college. The college has a survey available on its website for community members to fill out.

“It will be helpful to let us know what our community feels are the important issues at Iowa Central,” Crimmins said. “Everyone has a different opinion or a different belief on what is important out there based on their needs, so we thought we would put together this survey.”

The survey can be found at www.iowacentral.edu/PresidentSearch.

Until a replacement is named, the college’s four vice presidents will run Iowa Central, Crimmins said.

Angie Martin, vice president for finance and operations, will act as the liaison between the board of directors and the other vice presidents — Stacy Mentzer, vice president of instruction; Tom Beneke, vice president of enrollment management and student development; and Jim Kersten, vice president of external affairs and governmental relations.