This year marks a special milestone for Western Iowa Tech Community College as we celebrate 60 years of education, opportunity and community.
Since 1966, Western Iowa Tech has grown alongside the communities we serve. What began with a vision to provide accessible career and technical education has grown into a comprehensive community college serving students, businesses, and communities across western Iowa and beyond.
Over six decades, thousands of students have walked through our doors with different goals and different stories. They came to prepare for careers, earn degrees, learn new skills, build businesses, change directions, and create new opportunities for themselves and their families. Along the way, dedicated faculty and staff, community partners, and supporters have helped make those journeys possible.
The numbers tell part of that story. Western Iowa Tech has served more than 31,000 students, awarded nearly 50,000 credentials, and offered hundreds of degrees, diplomas, and certificates representing 184 unique educational and career pathways. Our impact also reaches far beyond traditional college programs through continuing education, workforce training, lifelong learning, high school equivalency programs, and partnerships with employers throughout the region.
But 60 years is about more than numbers. It is about the people who have made Western Iowa Tech what it is today. It is the friendships formed in classrooms, instructors who helped students discover what they were capable of, employees who dedicated their careers to serving others, and graduates who took what they learned here into workplaces and communities across the region and around the world.
Throughout our 60th anniversary year, we will celebrate those people and the moments that have shaped Western Iowa Tech. We'll look back at our history, reconnect with alumni, share stories from across the decades, and come together for special events and celebrations.
And while this anniversary gives us plenty to look back on, it also gives us a reason to look ahead. Western Iowa Tech continues to grow and evolve as the needs of our students, employers, and communities change, building on 60 years of experience while creating new opportunities for the generations still to come.
Whether you joined the Western Iowa Tech story decades ago or are stepping onto campus for the first time this year, you are part of what comes next.
Here's to 60 years of learning, connections, and opportunity, and to the next chapter of Western Iowa Tech.
Explore our history, alumni stories, anniversary events, and more at witcc.edu/60-years.