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Shovels in hand, Governor Blunt and OTC officials broke ground on the new addition to OTC’s Norman K. Myers Technical Education Center.
OTC received over two million dollars from the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative to help build the new addition.
Governor Blunt created the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative to help generate over $300 million for Missouri’s colleges and universities.
Blunt says this program will help colleges build better facilities and offer more opportunities for students.
“You know across the state the partnership with MOHELA, the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative is working and we’re able to fund $335 million worth of projects all across Missouri, at Missouri State University, OTC, campuses across the state are benefiting, private schools benefit as well, so it’s a partnership that’s working and has clearly made sense for Missouri,” Blunt said.
Blunt says this program is not only used to build new college facilities, but it also gives students scholarship opportunities.
“Every community college sees some benefit. Under the old system they had about 50 students that had scholarships at OTC, today they have nearly a thousand, so it has really has been a dramatic increase in scholarship assistance for our community college,” Blunt said.
The new addition to the Norman K. Myers Technical Education Center will include more classrooms and is expected to open August 2009.

For KSMU News, I’m Kristian Kriner.

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