Magnificent Effort: Community Members Make College Dream a Reality

April 15, 2010
Where would the community be without the efforts of the Great Bend Jaycees, other community leaders and a determined newspaper editor who banded together to push a grassroots cause in the early 1960s? Sufficed to say, the community would be without Barton Community College, which has educated thousands of students and served as an economic engine to the community for more than four decades.
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CPI and Barton Partner to Grow Pension Administration Workforce

April 1, 2010
CPI Qualified Plan Consultants Inc. is the proverbial big fish in a small pond. As one of the nation’s largest providers of third-party administration, the company chooses to keep its home office in Great Bend, where it started as a life insurance company with three employees and then incorporated into a TPA company 38 years ago.
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Reading, Writing, and Romance – Couples Spend Lives Together After Meeting at Barton

February 19, 2010
In the fall of 1969, when Barton County Community Junior College opened for the first time to students, twins Dennis and Ken Wallace were high school juniors living nearly 300 miles away in their boyhood hometown of Pampa, Texas. Their distance to the College grew much closer later that year when their father moved the family to Great Bend for a job.
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Barton’s Haz-Mat Training Facility Hosts Specialized State Training

March 16, 2010
Barton Community College partnered with Geary County Emergency Management to host the highest level of hazardous materials training at Barton’s Hazardous Materials and Emergency Services Training Institute, Grandview Plaza, March 1-12. The specialized training was conducted by the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s Office and approximately 20 fire fighters representing Junction City, Manhattan, Abilene, Fort Riley, Coffeyville and Colby participated in the 80-hour Hazardous Materials Technician certification training. Fire fighters completed the course by passing the IFSAC accredited written examination, administered by the University of Kansas Fire and Rescue Training Institute on March 12.
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Barton Program Preps Workers for Flourishing Natural Gas Industry

March 22, 2010
Fourteen months ago the workforce bottom dropped out for Keith Frank. Two years into a promising career as a railroad conductor, working in South Dakota, he was one of 5,000 employees let go by the company, which was clobbered by the recession.
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Grassroots Effort Grows Strong Booster Club with Start of College

Jan. 20, 2010
A month before the first classes began at Barton Community College more than 40 years ago, the Cougar Booster Club formed in support of the College’s first student-athletes, who had yet to arrive on campus. The club organized in August 1969, when 25 area men gathered in a lecture hall on the newly built college campus to plan support for men’s basketball and men’s track and field, the only two athletic programs at Barton for the few years.
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First Class Relishes Rugged Experiences at Barton during First Years

December 17, 2009
Students attending Barton Community College 40 years ago endured unique experiences compared to their counterparts at other colleges of the day. Their environment was also drastically different from Barton students who have followed in their footsteps these past four decades.
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Last in Line Becomes First to Enroll at Barton

December 15, 2009
Forty years ago, 18-year-old Connie Kruckenberg became first by being last. The 1969 Great Bend High School graduate became the first student to enroll at Barton County Community Junior College on Sept. 3 of that year. As a student employee for the startup College, which was a day away from holding its first enrollment in the newly built library, Kruckenberg was manning the last enrollment table when the moment of historical significance came.
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Barton Celebrates 25 Years with Fort Riley Operations

November 4, 2009
Kansas National Guard soldiers in Afghanistan take an online Western Civilization course in their off-duty hours. Nearly 10 thousand miles away at Fort Riley Army Base a soldier’s spouse concentrates in a classroom, while she is taking a daytime psychology course, on her way toward earning an associate’s degree. Nearby on base, soldiers are getting a detailed study of U.S. Department of Transportation fuel regulations. A few miles away from the base, EMT instructors prepare emergency workers for state certification. And a hundred miles west of the base, or even a few states away for that matter, employees of a manufacturing plant train on the proper handling of hazardous materials.
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New Instructors Bolster Barton Academics in 1970-71

October 14, 2009
During his first few weeks at Barton Community College, history instructor Gary Kenyon’s podium was a lower-level seat in the gymnasium where he lectured to students sitting a few seats above. His office was a carrel in the library where he packed up his belongings every afternoon only to bring them back the next morning.
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First Graduates Who Found Careers at Barton Look Back After 40 Years

October 12, 2009
On May 15, 1971, Carol Davis and Linda Dodson were among the 200 students who walked across a platform in Barton Community College’s newly built gymnasium to become the College’s first graduating class.
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Business Community Establishes College’s Early Endowment Association

September 16, 2009
Barton Community College Foundation owes its beginning to two business competitors who also were friends and shared a similar vision for a recently approved community college that was yet to be built. Insurance business owner Bruce Buehler, along with Grant Hoener, an agent with New York Life Insurance, believed that the upstart college needed an endowment association to help make it accessible to all area students. In early 1967, they visited with Board of Trustees Chairman Joe Mermis Jr., and he agreed.
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Peters Becomes First Female to Run and Serve as College Trustee

August 18, 2009
There was no sense of historical significance, and certainly no thought of one female breaking down late-1970s-barriers to the doors of male-dominated board rooms. In 1977, Bobbie Peters became the first woman to run for a seat on Barton Community College's Board of Trustees simply because she felt she was well qualified to carry out the duties of the position.
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Early Trustees Remember Their Roles in Forming College

Aug. 17, 2009
Among the elder statesmen who comprised the Board of Trustees for Barton Community College when the start-up college was being planned more than 40 years ago were two young leaders of the community. Dean Wells and Dr. Jerry Schrader, both in their mid-to-late 30s at the time, weren't original Board members, but they replaced two of the original members and were involved at the ground-breaking level of forming the new college.
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Frosh Forgoes University for Community College Opportunity

Aug. 7, 2009
Annalee Webb is a typical spring high school graduate preparing to transition to college life as the fall semester quickly approaches. She's eager and a bit anxious to get started. Still, little is traditional for the traditional student who hails from Gardner, Kan. Along with her belongings and dorm furnishings, Webb carries with her the responsibility of footing the bill for her college education.
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Barton Student Completes Medical Assistant Externship at CKMC

From the Great Bend Tribune, July 26, 2009
Like many new college students, Jennifer Wood didn't know exactly what career path she should take. The medical field looked promising and after considering a few options, Wood has found her niche as a medical assistant.
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