But that was before Wednesday’s announcement of a new five-year $36 million contract to provide post-secondary educational services to soldiers and their dependents.
“We are truly honored to be selected ... as the educational provider of choice and will continue to seek ways to enhance educational opportunities for our service members,” CTC Chancellor Dr Jim Anderson said.
The new contract will allow CTC to provide European tri-services for post-secondary programs and education support services in the United States Central Command Theater of Operations.
These services were previously offered by the CTC under a European joints-services contract.
By winning this contract, CTC will provide educational services to soldiers in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Kosovo and Qatar as well as in Italy, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.
William Beebe, who serves as the special assistant to the chancellor and the college’s contracting officer, wrote the request for proposal to the U.S. government, and was thrilled at hearing about the award.
“We wrote this proposal almost a year ago,” Beebe said. “It was really a drawn out adventure.”
Although this is a new contract, CTC is not new to providing educational services overseas.
In fact, CTC has offered classes to soldiers serving in Europe since 2003.
Under the new contract, CTC will operate Army learning centers, and be responsible for academic and vocational counseling services, functional academic skills training, a high school completion program, associate degree level vocational courses and testing laboratories.
CTC competed with a number of colleges and universities for the contract and learned about the award late last week.
“We don’t ever like to tell anybody we’ve got it until we get our hands on it,” Beebe said.
The new contract goes into effect Aug. 1, 2008.
