Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It is time now for our community connection right here on K one.
No one do you trust? And we always talk to our friends at Trike
County Tech about this time every month. We have a Champagne Canyon with us
today and you're with the Business Development the Foundation, I guess right here with
the Tray County Tech. Tell us a little bit about you and what the
Foundation's all about a Tray County Tech. Hey, good morning, thank you
for having me. So I've been with Tri County for about four years and
I transitioned from marketing into the foundation just in January, and so my role
really is trying to find creative ways to tell the Tri County Tech Foundation's story.
Well, you've got a fantastic story as it is. Yes. First
of all, you win all kinds of awards out there. Yeah, our
education is top notch, and we get to turn students around quickly because it's
all focused just on their trade and their skill and their certificates. You know,
it speaks wonders when we talk about sometimes that you know it's time to
sign up for classes and then we find out, well you better get in
here. Pretty early because they're going fast. And then we find out,
wow, we got a lot of students. So that speaks well of the
institution right there, because this happens time and time, even during COVID,
That's right, And that was probably the thing that surprised me the most when
I started working there. I just kind of had the assumption that if you
applied, you were able to get in. And it surprised me to know
that our high school programs fill up quickly and that we have waiting lists for
those, and same for our adult programs too. We have them really long
waiting list for cosmetology and LPN and some of our more popular programs. For
sure. You know, the high school thing is one story that's a kind
of a fast track for youngsters, and that in and of itself is amazing.
That's a good career exploration opportunity. Oh god, you do it now,
that's right before you spend nine years in colleges trying to figure out,
you know, what am I doing exactly? And also the other thing is
with the flex classes for adults, right now, you're meeting people where they
are and that is a tremendous story because a lot of educational institutions are saying
it's our way or the highway, and that's not true here Trake. That's
not true with us at all. We offer full time programs during the day
for some adults, and then we also do flex programs with their nights and
some weekends, and then we have some short term classes that you know,
are just a few months long depending on the certification. And another great story
that you know I've heard along the way. You see, you know,
I'm just an average guy and I'm hearing these great stories about Trake County Tech.
Okay, so when you walk into old Tray County Tech, people already
know about a handful and you know, we've got things going on now where
the youngsters are and other people are learning about aeronautics, and that is one
of the big things in this state. People think it's just you know,
cattle and gas and oil, and it's not. We fly things here.
We do. We have a new drones and aviation program that we launched a
year ago that's been really successful. And yeah, we have a lot to
offer everybody. It's not just you know, welding in cosmetology. We have
we have all kinds of programs. You know something, Champagne, One of
the things that I think is probably the coolest story is that people who attend
Trike County Tech don't walk away with the burden of a huge debt. That's
exactly right. How do you make that work? So we the high school
students get to attend for free, and they get to come from their sending
school part time, and so there is no cost for them to do that,
but the adult students do have to pay a minimal tuition fee. We
keep our prices very affordable, and then we offer financial assistance through the foundation
because we ceased accepting federal funding and the forms of FASTA and PALED grants in
twenty and fourteen. So our primary focus for the foundation is to support our
students with tuition and scholarships assistants, and we do that without to you know,
dance into a government tone. That's that's incredible, and that goes back
to you saying how quickly we can turn students around and how good we are
at getting students qualified and certified is because we don't have the restrictive federal stuff.
Oh wow, wow, that that that even makes your story a lot
more compelling. Here yes. And another thing too, is that people actually
walk away with the certificates for achievement too, because our world has changed.
Right, It's used to be you had to go to college, you had
to go to four years, and you had to have this little big piece
of paper that says I know how to do this right. Well, right
now you can take just a few classes and be certified. That's right.
Yeah, that's It's a big benefit of coming to Try County Tech is just
picking what it is that you want to focus on and not taking any of
the fluff and just knocking it out knocking that's cool. That's cool. Now,
when we talk business development, I imagine you talk to a lot of
our business partners in the community. Yeah, we also offer customized training for
some of our business partners as well. So that's another adult layer, but
more for people who are already employed who might be looking to just grow a
skill that their company needs them to grow on, and so there's customized training
and leadership and safety training and stuff like that too. That's beautiful because our
community has such big employers, right and with a lot of diverse opportunities for
skill development and improvement with their employees. That they have. This is a
marriage Maide in Bartlesville. Yeah, we're very blessed by the community and the
people that we work with and the companies that work with us and that we
work with. Now, I'm just gonna guess that you've never had this happen
to you because it's Trike County Tech speaks so boldly in our community. You've
never said, Hi, I'm Champagne Kane and I'm with Trike County Tech,
and they say Trike County Who, because that just doesn't happen because everybody knows
Trike County Tech. If you haven't been there yourself, you probably have a
kid or a grandkid who's attended, or you might have maybe even just attended
an event on campus because we do host you know, community partners on campus
as well. So if you haven't been a student, you've probably at least
been on campus. And if you haven't, I would invite you to come
out anytime and see our programs. It's fun to see the kids really with
the hands on learning. You know, our doors are open. Just stop
by and take a tour. I'm s happy to show your own We're Champagne
out there at the track County Tech. If you're just doing the drive by,
you say, oh, that's a nice building, But if you go
inside, you say, WHOA A lot going on in here. We have
state of the art technology and we we keep our kids on the cutting edge
of training. Oh that is that is well worth the investment. And you
know when we talk to a businesses who may need, you know, certain
skill sets of workers too. Were also talking to folks who you might want
to say, Hey, and an investment in our schools, an investment in
our community. It's an investment in our workforce, and it's an investment in
Bartlesville. Folks just can't say no to that. You took the words right
out of my mouth. I'll be using that, but that's very true.
We for the Foundation have donated just last year loan over one hundred and seventy
two thousand dollars in scholarships, and we did around eighty three hundred dollars in
emergency and food assistant and we assisted our robotics team with their competition and registration
fees. So we the foundation alone reached about two hundred and fifty students last
year. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, and then one hundred percent of
our educators donate to our foundation, which I think is something worth brogging about
because we really do believe in what we do and we put our money where
our mouth is. You know, you have such a great workforce yourself out
there at Tri County Tech. The Malcolm Baldridge Award is something that well,
we have to start building some more trophy cases because it just seems like you,
oh, there's oh, look, there's a war. And that's based
on a lot of different criteria, but the main thing is it's a great
place to work. It's a great place to work, and we've been voted
a great place to work for a number of years now. Yeah, And
therefore you have people who stay around a good long time, a lot of
institutional knowledge. And what's really cool about that is if you're a newcomer,
you've got a ton of mentors. Yes do. And when I started four
years ago, i was struggling with keeping up with everybody's names, and somebody
reminded me that these people don't see new people very often, and so it's
easy for them to remember my name. It's me that has to learn the
hundreds of other people's names because they don't leave don't leave very often. That
speaks well too. You know, when we talk about Trike County Attack.
If you have a student that's over the age of fifteen in your home,
chances are they've talked to mom and dad or your garden about the opportunities at
Trike County Tech. Have a fifteen year old boy, if we had the
conversations, yes, and you know, it's it's like a pie skippy and
uh and what have you. And it's one of those things where students kind
of look at that is a is a real cool thing. It's not like,
oh, gosh, here's an here's Mark School. They say, hey,
look at that, that's Trike County Tach. I can do something here.
I can make a difference. We try and treat our high school students
like adults, and so for them it's sort of an escape to get to
go to a different campus and you know, have the freedom of you know,
being treated like an adult. And you know what happens. They bring
that back home and they bring that back to school. You know, hey,
I've got more responsibilities now, and they start acting a lot more mature.
You know, fifteen can go two different ways. I'm not there yet,
with my own personal kid. But yes, what did that long ago?
You were fifteen? Well now that I wish, But anyway, it
really is a good indicator here about what the student's going to be like after
they finished their time at Trying County techn They go into it with all this
enthusiasm, they come out of it feeling a little bit more responsible and like,
you know, they're important. Crowd. Yeah, very crowd. Yeah,
that is that's kind of been kind of rewarding to you and you it's
that it's very rewarding just to help students discover who they are and as adults,
maybe to help them move from this level to the next level of their
potential because of the opportunities that they have at Tri County. Now, we
mentioned that we don't take any government money, but we do fun things in
order to help fund the school. We've got a very nice fund ranger coming
up. Yeah, at the end of well the first of October, October
fifth, it is, we're going to host our first golf tournament out at
Hillcrest Country Club and it'll be October fifth, and it's a shotgun style tournaments
with you know, food and prizes and swag and merchandise and it's there aren't
going to be any gimmicks, you know, if you pay the price and
then you just go have a nice lunch and you play a nice round the
golf, and we just want you to have like a top ofch experience and
we're really looking forward to it. We've had a few title sponsors step up
already, so I want to make sure in US. I think Ascension,
Saint John and DSR for being our title sponsors. And then we also have
a few sponsorships and teams still available. So you can go through our website
to learn more about the tournament, how to sponsor, how to register,
and that's Tri County Tech, dot ADU, slash Golf. Well, you
picked the best time of the year right right right soon as it hits October,
ish starts to cool down. Just to do that sweet spot, it's
going to be. We're really excited. Oh yeah and this, and how
many yeah teams do you think you've Well, we'll do twenty two teams probably.
We're just going to do an afternoon shotgun okay, yep, just a
little casual fun, just a little casual fundraiser. Well, Hillcrest is a
beautiful place to hold that too. And and of course, boy they treat
everybody like gold out there. Their staff is just incredible. Yeah, we
really want that experience for our for our donors to come out and experience that,
and yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I mean feel really good
about it. What else we got going on? Well, recently we received
a giant endowment from the Green Country Free Clinic and that was announced last Friday,
I believe the press release went out. So the Green Country Free Clinic
is closing and they are giving their assets to the Tri County Tech Foundation and
they have named the endowment after their founding director, Miss Sindra Preeble, and
so this endowment will never end. It will live in perpetuity. The money
will never go away, and the interest will be drawn every year and that
interest will be used to fund nurses. Because Miss Cindra Freeble is in our
inn and she started the clinic and to carry her name on are we received
a large endowment from them, and so that's really exciting for us and exciting
for our students because this will carry probably about ten nursing students up the current
interest rate every year. So this will go on in perpetuity and it will
be there long after I am, which is amazing. Oh and we get
to carry a little history along with it too, that's right. Wow,
I'm very excited about that. And we've had a few new named scholarships as
well recently, so we're really looking to just grow our endowment because that's our
primary source of funding since we don't accept federal funds for scholarships. Now,
how would someone who's just hearing this and they've been maybe thinking about leaving something
for when they're no longer here, right, how do they get a hold
of you is to kind of get the ball rolling. Well, there are
several ways to give. We of course take one time gifts, or we
can take recurring gifts that are just monthly donations that will go towards our general
funds and that will also assist with some overhead, some emergency assistants, some
food assistants, or it might go towards scholarships. And you can do that
online, in person or in the mail, and that's at Tri County Tech
dot EEDU, or you can visit us in person at sixty one O one
no Watter Road. You've can call me anytime if you'd like to discuss,
you know, a bequest or a legacy gift, which would be our larger
gifts. And you could also put us down as a beneficiary of a life
insurance policy, or you know, we could be a recipient of your four
one K funds, or if you have an IRA, we can be a
you can make a direct transfer to a nonprofit and that could be part of
your charitable distribution, which would be tax free. So there's lots of ways
to give to the foundation and we'll accept them all. Well, it's great.
So you've been a guy like me who's not a millionaire, but I've
lived very comfortably. If I see fit to it, I can just be
a regular monthly dollar. That's right. And we just launched the nineteen sixty
nine Club because our foundation was established in nineteen sixty nine and we're coming up
on a big anniversary next year, so we decided to establish in nineteen sixty
nine club. And that's just anyone who gives nineteen sixty nine or more a
month can be a part of our club and that will go into our general
fund and help all of our students not only with scholarships, but like I
said, with emergency assistance or food assistance as well. That's amazing. You
know, Trake County Tech offers so many different things and it is just well
worth going to the website and taking a look. Yeah, Tri County Tech
dot edu slash foundation will get you to the foundation page and then we have
a lot of information there on who we are, what we do, and
how to give. So I'd encourage you to go there and also check out
our golf tournament page if you're interested in golf. Indeed, is there anything
we might have missed? Well? I wanted just to make sure to thank
some of our corporate sponsors. Do that, zap them, you know,
that's right. We have people who give faithfully to the foundation, that's true,
or Conico, AEP, Philip sixty six, Chevron. We have partners
with Quick Trip Ross and then the Eastern Food Bank of Oklahoma also has a
small pantry in our campus so that students can come get on perishable food.
So we have a lot of community partners that I think we need to think
and I'd also like to thank our foundation board and our school board because they
do a lot for our program. Almo sounds like a family. It is
a family. Out there in one big coffee family or Champagne, thanks for
being with us today. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it all
right, and we've got to go. News coming up, and just a
little bit right here on Gay one, the one you trust. You've been
listening to our community connection with Champagne Kane. She is with our good friends
at Crike County Tech. How does Tim Howel at Arnoldmore and the Camp Punla
Home. No, he's done a good job. After a funeral, I'll
come in, I say, guys, great job. We really hit that
out of the part today. The family was well pleased. And that's the
phrase right there, when a family member tells me you made this experience so
much easier than I thought it was going to be. Thank you. That
is the high five moment right there. And then six months later you run
into them in a store or a restaurant and they come up to you and
shake your hand, put their arm around your hug and say, this is
our funeral director. He helped us so much when dad died. He is
a nice guy. His staff is so compassionate and so caring. They did
a great job. That is the ultimate experience they've had time to grieve a
little bit and reflect on what you've done. And they come in and they're
still on cloud nine because you help them pay tribute to someone they really cared
about. It'll be all right. We'll walk through this together. Arnold Moore
and the Camp Funeral Home, seven Dewey, We'll walk through this together.
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