Yavapai College President Penny Wills has been making the rounds of the Verde Valley on a mission to promote the benefits the school offers both regionally and locally.
Last week, Wills spoke to the Camp Verde Town Council at its Oct. 21 meeting.
Wills touted college endeavors like the Southwest Wine Center on the college’s Clarkdale campus.
The school converted the old racquetball courts at the campus into the wine center, the heart of the program where wines are produced by the students.
A vineyard grows up the side of the hill next to the center where students learn the ins and outs of viticulture, the science of caring and cultivating the grapes.
That program has been funded in part through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
“We’ve got the best knowledge of what makes a wine in the state,” Wills said. A tasting room is set to open on the site Friday, Nov. 20.
The college is also working with state universities, Wills said, touting work with the University of Arizona among others like Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University.
Yavapai College has plans to work with the University of Arizona, which recently acquired the DK Ranch in the Verde Valley. Yavapai College and University of Arizona both competed to obtain the ranch, 45 acres of property that sits along nearly 1,500 feet of Oak Creek.
The ranch was owned by the Steele Foundation, a philanthropic organization based out of Phoenix dedicated to education and health. The group wanted to give the property away for educational use.
Even though the university was granted the ranch, there are plans for Yavapai College students to take advantage of it and the university’s agriculture and life sciences program.
Wills said that the college works to meet the needs of the Verde Valley, an opinion that hasn’t always been shared, particularly when the college unveiled its 10-year plan for the future which calls for some programs to be moved out of the Verde Valley.
In response, the college brought together an advisory board made of residents from the Verde Valley, a group that tries to gauge what local residents want from the college and to relay that information back to the college’s governing board.
Wills took aim at some criticism that the college only has a 21 percent completion rate.
“Some people just want to take a class,” Wills said. “We have students who don’t want a degree, some people leave us before they have a degree.”
Wills said that the college continues to focus on dual enrollment programs and helping students transfer to other educational institutions.
Aside from education, Wills said the college also has a focus on economic development.
When it comes to small business development resources, Wills said she did feel the Verde Valley had been shortchanged at first.
Wills said the college went on to find the funding for a small business development counselor to work in this area.
Councilwoman Robin Whatley said she would like to see a bigger college presence in Camp Verde and the lower Verde Valley.
The college used to operate some programs out of the former Camp Verde Elementary School. The building shut down when the college decided to make changes in the Verde Valley.
“We are centrally located,” Whatley said. “I’d love to see Yavapai College put some investment in Camp Verde.”
Wills said that she would encourage people to talk with their state legislators if they’d like to see something like that in Camp Verde.
Wills also said that the college was planning more expansion into online programs and hoped that people would have access to quality broadband services to take advantage of the offerings.
When it comes to things like nursing programs, Wills said the population advantage for having programs like that is actually on the other side of the mountain.
Ultimately, Wills said that the cost of an education has its own benefits.
“Education to me is not just cost but an investment in our future,” Wills said, citing lower rates of unemployment and incarceration among people who have gone through a higher education program.
Find more Camp Verde news in this week’s edition of The Camp Verde Journal.
