Starting next spring, students at Southeast Technical College won’t only learn how to build homes in the classroom; they will help meet housing needs in the Sioux Falls area while training for high-demand construction careers.
The public technical college in South Dakota this month announced the Wells Fargo Homebuilding Lab, a campus expansion that will provide students with further hands-on construction experience while supporting regional affordable-housing efforts.
Cory Clasemann, president of Southeast Technical College, said the home-building lab is intended to align the college’s technical education programs with regional workforce needs.
“It’s our responsibility as a community partner to continue training more people in this field and help more graduates enter the workforce,” Clasemann said. “That way employers have the workers they need to continue building and growing the city.”
A new home-building lab, currently under construction, is slated for completion in spring 2027.
Southeast Technical College
The home-building lab: Southeast Technical College already offers hands-on construction training through community partnerships, including with Habitat for Humanity. But Clasemann said the new on-campus lab will allow students to apply skills in real time as they progress through coursework.
“We have had a relationship with Habitat for Humanity for many years,” Clasemann said. “But the pace at which Habitat needed homes built did not always align with where students were in the learning process.”
In conjunction with local partners, students will help build housing units intended for community use. By bringing construction projects onto campus, he said, students will be able to apply new skills in real time as they progress through coursework before the projects contribute to meeting community housing needs.
“They’ll be able to build over the course of the year and apply what they’re learning immediately,” Clasemann said. “We won’t have to worry about finding an off-site project that matches a particular skill students are working on.”
Construction students at Southeast Technical College apply classroom instruction in hands-on training environments.
Southeast Technical College
The establishment of the home-building lab comes at a time when South Dakota is projected to see ongoing demand for skilled trades workers, according to data from the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation.
Operating engineers and other construction equipment operators are expected to see 10.6 percent employment growth from 2022 to 2032, with an average of 195 annual job openings. During the same period, plumbing jobs are projected to see 12.3 percent growth, with 193 annual openings, while positions for welders are expected to see 11.4 percent growth, with 387 annual openings.
All three occupations are listed among the top 30 jobs with the greatest projected demand in the state through 2032. Clasemann said those workforce needs have helped drive the college’s investment in the home-building lab in partnership with the bank Wells Fargo.
Southeast Technical College invests in a home-building lab tied to housing and workforce needs in Sioux Falls.
Southeast Technical College
“We very intentionally are putting this building right along an interstate because of the way the campus sits, with a glass wall facing the interstate,” Clasemann said. “When people drive by, they’ll be able to see inside and watch that hands-on learning happening in real time.”
“We can do as many career days and bring students to campus as we can, but sometimes we just need to see it up close and see just how real it is,” he added. “We’re trying to peel back that curtain so people can see—not just prospective students, but also parents, neighbors and others in the community—what this work actually looks like. They can drive by and say, ‘Hey, that’s cool. I can actually see what’s happening.’”
Why this matters: The labor demand is one reason institutions like Southeast Technical College are expanding experiential learning opportunities tied to workforce needs. At Stephens College, for example, a pre-apprenticeship program aims to bring more women into the skilled trades to help address regional labor shortages in Missouri.
For Clasemann, that shift also reflects changing perceptions around technical education and skilled trades careers. He said experiential learning opportunities like the home-building lab can help students transition more quickly into the workforce by applying classroom instruction in real-world settings.
“We really believe that they need to be learning it while they’re here, so that way it reduces or eliminates that transition time and that onboarding time once they are employed,” Clasemann said. “That means it can’t just be theoretical—it needs to be practical and hands-on, and so that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
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