The Southeast Regional College celebrated their 30th anniversary on Wednesday at the Weyburn campus.

The Community College, later renamed the Southeast Regional College, was established in 1975. In attendance at the 30th anniversary was Kathryn Groshong, who was on the charter board which founded the college, and later became the chairperson of the board in 1977-78.

"We established the guidelines and, more or less, the founding principles of the college," Groshong said.

The founding principle of the college was to reach out to the rural communities so they could have an opportunity to get post-secondary education. However, getting the college started up was not easy.

"It wasn't an easy task because community colleges were a fairly new concept in Saskatchewan," Groshong said.

When the Community College started out they had contact committees in each community to let the board know what kind of courses they would like to see taught. The college, basically, ran on the response from the rural communities.

By the end of 1978 there were 21 university courses offered, 87 adult basic education programs and 45 programs from the Saskatchewan Technical Institute from Moose Jaw. There were 450 contact committee members at the time in 73 communities in Southeastern Saskatchewan.

Now there are six campuses in the southeast area, as well as courses running in about 40 different communities.

"If we have a program that any particular community wants we rent space, get an instructor and run the program," said current CEO of the Southeast Regional College, Graham Mickleborough.

The campus was a lot different 30 years ago as well. Instead of having centralized campuses, the classes would take place in town halls, schools, church basements and recreation centres.

Thirty years ago, there was also a wide variety of ages that attend the classes, which Groshong feels has changed.

"Now it is kind of geared towards students," she said.

She is really proud to see what the Southeast Regional College has become, but she would like to see them reach out a bit more to the rural communities.

"They say learning is life-long and I think this kind of accessible programming would make the rural communities an attractive place to live," Groshong said.

The programs that were offered at the time included welding, machinery maintenance, carpentry and accounting. They also had other interest classes including sewing, upholstery, typing, quilting, photography, oil and acrylic painting, driver training, dancing and cake decorating.

Now the Southeast Regional College offers courses such as welding, for which they share a lab with the high school, new media, university classes, adult basic education, business administration and CPR classes.

In Groshong's final report to the Minister of Continuing Education as chairperson on the board, she basically explained how great it is to have a college for rural communities.

"There is nothing quite as exciting as the transformation of creative, original thoughts into reality," she wrote. "The growth of the community college program has been an inspiration to me and I feel privileged to have been associated with it."

Technology has come a long way since 1975. One of the newest pieces of technology at the college is the Interactive Cyber Learning Network.

"It is really two-way video conferencing complemented by a smart board and what it allows users to do is instruct in one location and have students in other locations receive real-time audio and video of the instructor, as well as anything they might be doing on the board," Mickleborough said.

Also, at the celebration, the new media class put together a PowerPoint presentation, which is another example of technology that has made its way to the college.

There are currently about 7,000 students attending the college and 6,500 of them are taking industry-based studies.