Terra State Holds Grand Opening For New Leadership & Entrepreneurial Center
Friday, March 29, Terra State Community College held its grand opening for the Doepker Leadership & Entrepreneurial Center, which will serve as a place where area businesses, manufacturers, health care providers and their employees can get leadership training to advance in their careers. The Center is the first of its kind for community colleges in Ohio.
President Dr. Ronald Schumacher is looking forward to seeing how students take advantage of the Center to build their skills to be a more vital part of the community after they graduate. “We will be building seminar style courses for our students so they can leave us with the professional skills that many of our employers in the area are so in need of,” he said.
Through the Terra College Foundation, Terra State received a $287,916 grant from the United State Department of Agriculture in the form of a Rural Business Development Grant and a gift from CEO and President of the Doepker Group, Jeffrey Doepker, and his wife Sherry Doepker. Through both contributions, renovations were made to the atrium of the Engineering Technologies Building, training rooms (B101 & 103), the board room (B206), and The Kern Center (B104) with all new furnishings, up to date speaker systems, paint, projectors, charging stations, TVs and more.
“We really tried to make everything as dynamic and high technology as possible to meet the needs of today’s leaders,” said Beth Bower, Grant Writer for the Terra College Foundation. “Up until this point, every business from our area that wanted to do leadership training would have to send people to Cleveland or Toledo. It wasn’t cost effective and it wasn’t bringing leadership to the businesses here that really needed it,” she said.
Mr. Doepker was happy to have the opportunity to make the opening of the Center a possibility. “Terra’s staff and leadership team made this decision very easy,” he said. “This institution’s long standing excellence in delivering programs to its student and local business is already in place.”
United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) State Director of Ohio David Hall expressed his excitement to be a partner. “I’m excited and my staff is excited to be able to support something like this in our rural community,” he said. “I expect rural development at the state level will be a great partner with Terra State in the future.”
Upcoming trainings include Situational Leadership II, Chill Skills: Stress Management for Busy People and more.
“High level leaders are born—not made, but until you provide the process to unlock and enhance these leadership attributes they possess, they may never realize their true potential,” Mr. Doepker said. “We view this center as that vehicle to provide this process.”