Tara Kuipers

Northwest College Board of Trustees Chairman Tara Kuipers wants a second term to help build on what the college has accomplished in her first.

Kuipers is one of three candidates for two seats on the board’s Cody subdistrict, along with longtime incumbent John Housel and challenger Ted Smith.

She has received a crash course on being an elected board member over her first term, which has included working through the Covid pandemic, a presidential change and a new student center.

“I feel like my first two years as a trustee was just really kind of getting my feet underneath me in a really rudimentary sense, and then we were faced with, you know, some really big challenges of the college,” she said, adding “There's just so many unique things that might happen once in the life of a trustee, and a few of them happened in my first four years.”

She’s proud of how the college has worked through the challenges of her first term and excited to see how the college moves forward in the years ahead.

“There's just a lot of really exciting stuff happening at the college,” she said. “There's just so much excitement, and there's so many things that are just emerging, and there's just a really positive energy at the campus right now, and I would be excited to be part of it for another four years.”

During her first term Kuipers was also part of putting together a new strategic plan for the college, which is now referred to by the board and college leadership when making major decisions.

While this is the first elected board Kuipers has been on, she’s no stranger to boards. After decades in higher education, nonprofit leadership and community development, in 2016 she began her own consulting firm and now works with boards all over, often to help them engage with their communities. For isntance, she was the facilitator for the Wilderness Study Areas groups late last decade, and facilitated a forum in Cody in 2018 on the school district’s adoption of a policy to allow armed, trained staff in the schools.

Kuipers, who grew up in South Dakota, and her husband have lived in Cody for 15 years, initially moving for a job with the University of Wyoming.

She sees her role as first and foremost, “being a steward of the future of Northwest College.”

But she also tries to represent the interests of the Cody community and maintain its connection to the Powell-based college.

“I do try to really seek out and hear the perspectives in Cody,” she said. “ And I think we're doing a good job, and I think we can continually do a better job, of making Northwest College have a sense of ownership across Cody and Powell as well as Meeteetse.”

Kuipers, as chair this year, has also been in the middle of the biggest debate currently ongoing at the college, that of a proposal made to change the name to Yellowstone College.

As she said at the October board meeting on the proposal, while she is against the proposal at the moment, she is excited about the possibility of what a name change could do for the college, but she needs more information on the cost, the process and the other consequences that could come from moving forward.