Southeast Tech highlights community service day, outlines expansion of community health worker training

Southeast Technical College board members heard a report on the college’s fall service-to-community (STC) days and a detailed briefing on the Community Health Worker (CHW) certificate program.

Kristen Wellness introduced the STC days program, which the presenter said renewed long-standing community partnerships and added a new initiative with Kids Against Hunger. Board members were told the week drew "just over 300 volunteers," a mix of students and employees.

Dr. Angela Landin, a faculty member and CHW instructor, described CHWs as "frontline public health workers" who help bridge medical care, public health and social services. Landin said Southeast Tech has moved the CHW certificate from an initial 16-week format to an eight-week online certificate and now runs five cohorts a year. "It's an 8 week online certificate for $3,000 roughly," Landin said, framing the program as a short, job‑ready credential.

Landin gave several program-scale figures during the presentation: she said the state has both certificate-level CHWs and historically recognized community health representatives (CHRs), reported roughly 240 recently trained CHWs with Southeast Tech contributing a substantial share of new trainees and cited a retention rate of about 93%. She described South Dakota as an early adopter of Medicaid reimbursement for CHW/CHR services and said participating organizations are submitting Medicaid claims for some services.

Board members asked how CHWs could be used in schools. Landin suggested starting with at‑risk schools and said Falls Community Health will not be able to fully staff school‑based CHWs, so local funding or scholarships may be necessary. On grant funding, she said the state’s rural health transformation monies could allocate scholarships; she described an estimate about potential statewide funding that was hedged in the presentation (the presenter said the state "might possibly" receive about $100 million over five years and that Southeast Tech could expect scholarships in the roughly $140,000–$260,000 per year range if those funds materialize). The speaker framed those figures as estimates, not finalized allocations.

After discussion, the board moved and approved a motion to accept the CHW program update by voice vote.

Why this matters: CHWs serve as low‑cost connectors between residents and services; the college’s training pipeline, certification cadence and the prospect of scholarship or grant funding could affect workforce capacity in medically underserved parts of the state.

What happens next: Board members asked budget staff to consider how the college might fund pilot school‑based CHWs and to track possible rural health grant awards and state legislative outcomes tied to the Abner Center funding referenced later in the meeting.