The Northern Marianas College hopes to have a \u201ccampus renaissance\u201d soon, with a plan to initiate by the end of the next calendar year a facility financing scheme based on the \u201cGuam model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regent William Torres, who chairs the fiscal committee on facilities, said that U.S. Department of Agriculture area director Joseph Diego assured him in a meeting last week that NMC would receive \u201cdue priority and commitment\u201d for facility financing from USDA.<\/p>\n
Torres said he also met with the University of Guam Board of Regents and the planning and facility manager of the Guam Community College.<\/p>\n
Both the UOG and GCC have availed of the Community Facilities Direct and Guaranteed Loan program under the USDA\u2019s Rural Development program. UOG has borrowed $13.5 million over 40 years at 4.5 percent interest, and GCC has borrowed $3.5 million.<\/p>\n
UOG services this debt through a combination of commitment from the Guam Legislature for an annual appropriation of $500,000 per year for the life of the loan, $200,000 from the UOG Endowment Foundation, and $50,000 from internal revenue sources.<\/p>\n
GCC services its loan through revenues from tuition and fees.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, Torres said he has met with Vicki Villagomez from the CNMI Capital Improvement Projects office, and expressed the need for executive commitment in the form $1 million to $2 million in CIP money to the college for the next 10 or 15 years.<\/p>\n
This, Torres said, will give the college greater leverage when it comes to debt service with USDA as it has a guarantee from the CNMI government in place.<\/p>\n
The college has not undergone major reconstruction since it was built on or about 1955 as a single storey, semi-concrete hospital. <\/p>\n
Under the leadership of his committee, Torres hopes to \u201clearn from failures\u201d in the past and provide the guidance necessary in providing students with the facilities they deserve.<\/p>\n
Torres hopes that 80 percent of the CNMI\u2019s high school graduates will choose to \u201ccomplete two-year degree at home\u201d because there will be facilities and programs in place to make it a more viable and cheaper option.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe owe it to our students to modernize the campus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that the college\u2019s accrediting commission also expects them to pursue upgrades in facilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Northern Marianas College hopes to have a \u201ccampus renaissance\u201d soon, with a plan to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[89,26,445,117],"class_list":["post-185438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cip","tag-cnmi","tag-uog","tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}