Northeast Community College
Northeast Community College is a public two-year institution serving 20 counties in 14,000 sq, miles in northeast Nebraska. The main campus is located in Norfolk, Nebraska, with extended campuses in South Sioux City, O’Neill and West Point. Named one of the top ten community colleges in the U.S. in 2017 by the Aspen Institute, Northeast has over 130 programs and concentrations with about 7,000 credit students and an additional 7,000 non-credit students. The college’s agriculture programs collectively represent the largest program of study with 350 students in 11 programs of study (two AA/AS degrees in agriculture and pre-veterinary medicine and nine AAS degrees ranging from agribusiness to mechanized agriculture, animal science, veterinary technology, horticulture and agronomy), with its most recent addition of precision agriculture in 2016.
Northeast has a 500 acre working farm contiguous to the College campus, with swine, sheep, horses and a 50 cow/calf herd as well as 4 center pivot irrigation systems. The College works with its partners to do applied research on the farm to not only test the newest innovations in technology and conservation practices, but to provide experiential learning opportunities for students to engage and become the next early adopters of change. The College was named to the top 10 of the National Science Foundation’s Community College Innovation Challenge for its variable rate irrigation study and was the recent recipient of the agency’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant to fund the expansion of Precision Agriculture in the high school as well as workforce training to the incumbent workforce.
In addition, Northeast is embarking on a $50 million major gifts campaign to build an Agriculture & Water Center of Excellence to construct new ag facilities, farm and feedlot operations and to build additional programmatic support around applied research.
