Coeur d'Alene-based North Idaho College has placed its college-credit and noncredit trades- and industry-related training programs under joint management and plans to construct a new building so it can expand and move some of its professional-technical courses off campus.

NIC last month appointed John "Mike" Mires to be dean of professional, technical, and work-force education. The college also dismissed longtime Workforce Training Center director Robert Ketchum, eliminating his position and giving Mires more direct responsibility over work-force programs as well as professional-technical education. Mires is the former dean of instruction for technical education at Spokane Community College.

Mires says NIC plans to move its manufacturing and trades-related professional-technical education programs from the school's main campus to a separate campus envisioned on the Rathdrum Prairie, where it will build the planned 70,000-square-foot building.

"The facilities on the NIC campus are built for half the population it has today," Mires says. "We could triple the diesel program based on demand."

Professional-technical education programs offer college-credit courses in fields such as diesel technology, welding, auto maintenance, and allied health. Enrollment in such programs at NIC has reached capacity, and many courses have waiting lists, Mires says.

NIC's student enrollment totaled 4,633 in the current semester, up 20.4 percent from the year-earlier semester. Of those students, 665 students were enrolled in professional-technical programs, a 17 percent increase from the 2009 spring semester.

NIC is requesting $20 million from the state of Idaho's permanent building fund to construct the trades and industry building. The structure would be erected on a 40-acre parcel of land that NIC bought recently at the southwest corner of Lancaster and Meyer roads, south of the city of Rathdrum. The funding request could go before the Idaho state Department of Public Works as early as next year, although Mires estimates that construction wouldn't begin for at least two or three years.

"It will be a regional center for technical education," Mires says. "The expansion will help us meet today's needs."

NIC's allied health programs, which include pharmacy technology, practical nursing, and radiography technology, would remain on its main campus.

The proposed trades and industry building site would be part of a 100-acre Kootenai Technical Education Campus on which the Lakeland, Coeur d'Alene, and Post Falls school districts plan to build a high school for students who want to enter careers in trades and industries rather than attend a four-year college. A group of manufacturers helped secure the land for the school districts.

"Ultimately, I think some manufacturers would like to move out there," Mires says.

NIC's Workforce Training Center will remain in the Riverbend Commerce Park, south of Interstate 90, in Post Falls.

Work-force programs generally involve short-term, noncredit training in certain job skills, although they include some apprenticeship programs that require extensive training and experience, says Marie Price, NIC's director for work-force and community education.

NIC offers apprenticeship programs in plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, which take four years of training and 2,000 on-the-job hours to complete, Price says.

About 8,300 people took courses through the Workforce Training Center last school year, and that number is expected to increase by 10 percent this year, although participation in apprenticeship programs has declined during the current economic downturn.

Price says 275 people are in apprenticeship programs now, down from 400 last year.

"On-the-job training is required," Price says. "If no one is hiring they can't get that training."

Also due to the weak economy, industry demand for job-specific training programs has declined, says Sherry Wallis, NIC's director for customized training.

"Much of our focus is on incumbent workers and contracts with employers," Wallis says, adding that companies tend to cut training funds during economic downturns.

Nevertheless, the college needs to be ready to ramp up work-force training programs as the region emerges from the recession, Mires says.

The Workforce Training Center could become the proving grounds for some courses that eventually would become college-credit classes, he says.

"It's difficult to start a credit program, but when Marie and Sherry say we can do this (at the Workforce Training Center), it happens," Mires says. "If work-force and continuing-education courses are sustainable, they might move out to the credit model."

Mires says he anticipates the state will cut NIC's professional-technical education budget, but that those cuts will be manageable compared with other cuts in education that he's hearing about.

Mires says the professional-technical program is operating with a current budget of $4.2 million, and its next budget is expected to be cut by about $150,000, or 1.6 percent, based on the most recent predictions.

The Workforce Training Center, which is set up to rely on student fees and employer contracts for its primary funding, operates under a separate budget, although NIC has subsidized its building maintenance and services at a cost of about $450,000 annually.

Mires says NIC's goal is for the Workforce Training Center to become fully self-sufficient.

"We would like to have the Workforce Training Center as an auxiliary service without using taxes to support it," he says.