Montana's Best Community College

Back-to-school season in Montana isn't just for kids, it can mean pursuing a degree or training for a career. Not everyone's path leads them to a four-year college or university. There are a lot of skills that a person can master for a career in a variety of fields, including trade positions.

Montana has its share of community colleges, and one in particular stands out, according to SmartAsset.com. They have listed the overall best community colleges in the country and they have included each state's best community college. For Montana that would be the Flathead Valley Community College.

Flathead Valley Community College located in Kalispell, offers a lot of programs for all kinds of students. I spoke with Blake Thompson, the Director of Trades at the college about some of the programs they offer for students.

So we have a welding and fabrication program. There's an electrical program primarily geared towards residential applications. There are electronics, which involve motor controls, and programmable logic controllers. We have machining which includes both manual and CNC machining. There's heavy equipment operations, credentials, commercial drivers licensing, H/VAC/R so heating, ventilation, air conditioning. There's a pretty wide variety of opportunities that we have available here.

These are just a sampling of programs that the school has to offer, FVCC has also been the recipient of a grant from the rock band Metallica, and their "Metallica Scholars" program.

Blake credits all the employees for helping them make the list of some of the best community colleges in the country, and looks ahead to what they are trying to accomplish.

One of our goals here within the last couple of years is to provide means for folks to come in and continue to develop those skills so that they can get back out into the workforce and hopefully make a little bit more money and have more opportunities available to them. Also creating pathways so that a student can go and develop their skills and get out there in the workforce, but also have it be meaningful.

If a student wants to finish a 2-year degree and then transfer to another school in the Montana University system, that's another option from FVCC.