Northeastern Junior College’s Yuma Campus is now open and offering credit-bearing courses to residents of Yuma and surrounding communities for the spring semester of 2020.
Registration is also open for short-term and ongoing adult education classes such as Annie’s Project and English as a second language (ESL).
“We are extremely pleased to offer Yuma-area residents college-level courses to advance their education and careers,” said Jay A. Lee, President of Northeastern. “Local residents made it abundantly clear they wanted a Northeastern campus, and we are now delivering on the commitment we made to open it.”
Full-semester courses open to registration at the Yuma Campus include an array of math, English, journalism and agriculture. Certain courses taught on the Sterling campus will be available for students to attend in real time via virtual classroom technology installed at the Yuma campus. An up-to-date listing of classes open for registration is available at www.njc.edu/yuma. (See the advertisement inside this edition for more information.)
“This is a landmark day for Yuma as well as Northeastern,” said Linda Merkl, Northeastern’s Vice President of Academic Affairs. “This is our first satellite campus within the college’s five-county
service area, and Yuma-area residents now have ready access to college-level courses that will benefit the community for years to come.”
Northeastern’s service area, as designated by the Colorado Community College System, includes Logan, Yuma, Phillips, Sedgwick and Washington counties.
The new Yuma Campus is located in the building formerly occupied by the City of Yuma at 910 South Main Street.
For more information about registration and enrollment for Yuma Campus courses, please call the Northeastern Admissions Office in Sterling at 970-521-7000.
A couple of Yuma residents are actively employed at the Yuma location. Jody Brandner was hired last fall to be in charge of maintenance and the grounds. Marylu Smith-Dischner recently was hired as the facilitator.
She will begin in her new role on Monday, January 20, when the NJC Yuma campus officially opens. Classes begin the next day.
NJC has had crews preparing the Yuma site for the past several months, and the whole effort goes back to 2018, when the junior college, City of Yuma and Bank of Colorado began working on a three-way property swap that resulted in City Hall moving downtown to the old Bank of Colorado location, and NJC locating in the former city hall.
“We’ve been working on this for 18 months now,” said Lisa Lefevre, vice president of administrative services.
Most of the work inside has centered on wiring for computers and the virtual classroom.
Lefevre said there were two big challenges in preparing the building. One was installing the internet “loop” and the other was getting approval from the Higher Learning Commission, which Lefevre said NJC received in December.
Many of the initial offerings are the virtual classroom with the class being taught from Sterling. However, some classes that will begin later in February, such as English 115 and English 121, will have on-site instructors.
The facility already hosted an adult ESL class last fall, and will so again this semester. 
NJC leaders also were meeting with Yuma High School earlier this week to work out the welding class agreement which will be offered in the high school’s vo-ag shop, with equipment purchased by NJC.
The Yuma campus will be open full-time during weekdays, as well as when there are night classes.
About Northeastern
Northeastern Junior College is Colorado’s largest two-year residential college. It is part of the Colorado Community College System and is institutionally accredited by NCA (HLC). Northeastern offers a wide variety of degree and certificate programs, along with career and technical education (CTE) and community classes. Northeastern offers four-year degree programs through participating four-year colleges.
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