A stone’s throw away from the construction site of the Wasatch County School District’s new Deer Creek High School, Mountainland Technical College’s first Wasatch Back campus is receiving its final touches.
Construction is about 18 months in. The roughly 98,000-square-foot campus still needs doors and windows installed, as well as cabinetry, flooring, and some drywall, before completion in June. The first day of school is August 17.
The first Mountainland Technical College campus was established in 1989 and offered hands-on courses and apprenticeships in various trades, healthcare professions and service careers. Now, the public community college has five campuses in Utah County. A small selection of courses is also offered at Utah Valley University’s Wasatch Campus and in the Wasatch County, Park City and North and South Summit school districts.
Mountainland Technical College serves Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties, but Vice President Joseph Demma said administrators have long considered the Wasatch Back to be “underserved.”
That began to change when former Wasatch County School District Superintendent Paul Sweat approached college administrators in 2021 with a proposition: The school district would donate 2.5 acres of its land near Deer Creek High School, valued at $900,000, if Mountainland Technical College built a campus on the property.
For college administrators, it was an easy decision.
The school district’s land donation made it easier to secure funding for the $65 million project from the state Legislature, which funds about 85% of all Mountainland Technical College operations, according to Demma. The other 15% is made up of student tuition and fees, as well as donations and grants.
Demma said the organization wants to build similar campuses in the Park City and North and South Summit school districts.
“When districts come to the table with a donation like Wasatch did, it makes it much easier for us to go secure funding from the Legislature,” he said.
The Heber City campus will begin with 15 programs, and could expand to 38 in future semesters to better reflect what is offered at other Mountainland Technical College campuses.
“Right out the gate, this community is going to have access to programs that they’ve had to drive down the canyon to get to,” Demma said. “Now, it’s in their backyard.”
Applications for the healthcare programs, which include dental, medical and nurse assisting, pharmacy technician and emergency medical technician, open Wednesday. Applications for the remaining programs open on April 29.
The length and cost vary, depending on the program.
The shortest program is the commercial driver’s license program, which teaches students to drive semitrucks in four to seven weeks. The students will be taught using both a driving simulator and a range outside.
Demma said the commercial driver’s license program was added to the roster of programs in direct response to the local community’s interest in such a program.
“All of these programs that we built here have been intentional through exhaustive research, both on what the labor market demands are in the economy in this region, as well as the community’s interests. You have to marry those two. Otherwise, our programs don’t run,” he said.
The longest programs are the electrical and plumbing apprenticeships, which take about four years. Demma said the average length of a Mountainland Technical College program is about 18 months.
The most expensive program, cosmetology, costs almost $7,100. The cheapest, the certified nursing assistant program, costs $755. The cost per credit hour will be $125.
Any courses that high school students attend are free, as required by the state Legislature. The only costs are for supplies and materials. Demma noted that the financial aid and scholarship office can help offset those costs if they are a barrier to enrollment.
Across all campuses, Demma said, about 30% of students enrolled are high schoolers, and the rest are adults. He expects that percentage to be higher at the Heber City campus, given its proximity to Deer Creek High School.
This will be the first campus so close to a high school, and Demma is confident the experiment, which he said was pulled off by contemporaries like Uintah Basin Technical College, will succeed.
Mountainland Technical College’s graduation rate is 82%, and its job placement rate is 89%. Demma said the quality of counseling contributes to those percentages. Admissions advisors, academic counselors, career placement and transfer specialists help guide each student from admission to well after graduation, free of charge even after graduation.
“We have some students who have graduated a couple of years back that come back and see our career services, whether it’s refreshing on interview skills or resume adjustments or networking. So, our relationship with our students, we hope, is evergreen,” Demma said.
Pathways after Mountainland Technical College are varied.
Some graduates go straight into their job field, while others seek additional education. Mountainland Technical College has agreements with Weber State University, Utah Valley University, Utah State University, Snow College and Salt Lake Community College that allow credits obtained at the technical college to directly transfer to degrees at those universities.
Mountainland Technical College will begin hiring instructors for its Heber City campus this month.
Vice President of Administrative Services Kirt Michaelis, who has overseen construction on the Heber City campus, expects the vast majority of instructors to be from Wasatch County.
“The opportunity to put more back into this economy is pretty exciting,” he said.
The college tends to look for industry rather than teaching experience.
Mountainland Technical College Vice President of Administrative Services Kirt Michaelis has overseen construction on the Heber City campus. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record 
Mountainland Technical College administrators Joseph Demma and Kirt Michaelis tour the new Heber City campus. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record
“We don’t hire teachers. We hire industry professionals, but then we help teach them how to teach because not everybody who is a welder inherently knows how to build a curriculum or to run a classroom,” Demma said.
The advisory boards for each program are also made up of industry professionals volunteering their time to help guide curricula based on advancements they observe in their fields.
That has been especially helpful in technology courses. For example, IT has shifted from repair toward cybersecurity in recent years, Michaelis said.
“We’re always looking at the market. If there’s a change, we try to adapt and be ready for the market, because our goal isn’t just to get a student through school, but it’s to find them employment afterward. If our students aren’t getting employment, then we’re not doing our job,” he added.
Mountainland Technical College’s technology programs will not be immediately available at the Heber City campus due to funding restraints, but Demma hopes to start them next year.
One of the more unusual programs that will be immediately available in August is cosmetology. The students will practice in a salon area rather than a traditional classroom. Much of their practice will be on actual customers, who can visit the college for a haircut, color, pedicure or manicure at a lower cost than a traditional barber or nail salon while financially supporting the program.
Students in the dental assisting program will also have the opportunity to work on people — mostly each other, but also on people without dental insurance who sign up to receive free dental care from students under the guidance of their instructor.
Meanwhile, students in the culinary arts program will operate out of a kitchen and get to make and serve food for fellow students and members of the public.
Every program has both a classroom and some sort of “lab” area where students will receive the bulk of their hands-on training. The classroom windows are designed so people walking the hallways can easily observe students performing hands-on work through windows, whether it be welding or repairing a diesel rig. Michaelis explained that Mountainland Technical College campuses are designed that way to generate excitement and interest in programs.
Hands-on experience takes place both on and off campus. Many programs have an externship portion, requiring students to work in a professional environment. For example, nurse assistant students work in care facilities to learn how to take care of patients in long-term care.
“We definitely want them to understand what the job is before they’re going out there and participating in that,” Michaelis said.
One of Michaelis’ sons is currently undergoing an externship at Intermountain Healthcare as part of the medical assistant program. His other two sons graduated from Mountainland Technical College’s medical assistant and electrical apprenticeship programs.
Mountainland Technical College administrators are certainly practitioners of what they preach. Demma said most of the communications team is made up of graduates from the college.
For example, Communications Director Maile Richardson went through the nurse assistant program at the Provo campus during the COVID-19 pandemic. She previously had a bachelor’s degree in communications but was unsure whether she wanted to be in that field or in healthcare. Although she ended up in communications, she’ll carry the skills she learned in the nurse assistant program with her for the rest of her life.
“When I’m a mom, I’ll use those skills. When I happen upon an accident, I can use those skills. Both my brothers are police officers, and they both took our EMT program and are actively using those skills,” she said.
Michaelis added, “I think we’re all firm believers in the education we provide. It’s education that puts you to work immediately. And to me, that’s what we’re all about.”