The Federal Government conveyed the old BLM office buildings in Lewistown to MSU-Northern to house their new Lewistown campus and the Central Montana Education Center.

MSU-Northern sponsored a "Signing Celebration" reception at the Yogo Inn Tuesday, February 21, 2006 from 4:30 6:30 p.m. as a special thank you to everyone who helped make this dream a reality. Preliminary drawings of the projected renovation were on display and refreshments were be provided.

Alex Capdeville, Chancellor of MSU-Northern said, "We are so pleased that everything is finally coming together for this facility. We have always enjoyed working with Lewistown and we look forward to our long term relationship with the community growing even more. We are committed to continuing to help provide programs that meet the needs of Central Montana students."

This project is the result of a collaborative effort on the part of Educational Opportunities for Central Montana (EOCM), MSU-Northern and the Central Montana Medical Center, which currently houses the MSU-Northern nursing program. In 1985 "Educational Opportunities for Central Montana", or EOCM, began as a non profit, community board that was formed with the mission of bringing college coursework and professional training opportunities to the place bound citizens of this very rural area. EOCM started by offering nine college courses that were brokered in from units of the Montana University system. As the demand for more courses increased, EOCM partnered with MSU-Northern to streamline admission and give students the opportunity to apply for Federal Financial Aid. The excellent relationship between EOCM and MSU-Northern has been instrumental in this growth. Now Northern offers 135 courses a year and serves 52 full time equivalent students.

Since 1999, Lewistown has made a concentrated effort to secure a facility to house their growing programs. Architects estimate that a new facility would cost approximately $2.5 million dollars to build. The county gifted a piece of land to put a new building on, but EOCM had been unable, after many attempts, to secure the necessary funding.

Government. The former, vacated BLM property went up for public conveyance. This property is 3.6 plus acres with an office building that was exactly the square footage needed for their facility (15,000 square feet), plus a heated 6,000 square foot warehouse, parking lots, and several outbuildings. MSU-Northern and Lewistown once again partnered to see if they could obtain the property at no cost, which is allowed for accredited educational entities.

The local task force conducted a feasibility study on the BLM building and determined that this facility was a good fit and would take approximately $1.3 million to retrofit into a state of the art educational center. Diane Oldenburg, Director of EOCM commented that, "It is exciting to see the money that has been received and pledged will finally be put to good use. We will need to do some additional fundraising but we believe that it will be easier to raise the final amount now that people are able to see it actually starting to happen. We are very grateful to the people of Central Montana for their generous support."

This project was presented to the Montana Board of Regents at the September meeting in Billings and received final authorization during the November meeting in Bozeman. The renovations will begin this fall and are projected to be finished in time for the beginning of the fall 2007 semester.