Regional center director takes pride in school’s impact

With a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in education, Kirkwood Washington County Regional Center Director Tera Pickens is, perhaps, overqualified for her role in the county of 22,000.

She and her husband moved to town from Cedar Rapids in 2011, around the same time they were planning to start raising a family. Since then, she said Washington had become home.

“I love this small-town community, and the ease with which you can raise children in this community,” she said. “Everything is so accessible, it’s close, we have a wonderful circle and network of friends, we have a great church community. The village is right here, for our family.”

In September of that year, months after her hire and the family’s move, a bond issue passed to build a new Kirkwood Regional Center by fall of 2014, which would end up being two kids later for Pickens.

“I look back and, you kind of wonder how you did it,” she said. “You’re not sleeping through the nights because babies are up and crying, and my two oldest daughters are only 20 months apart … I remember the sleep deprivation, and meeting with all of these architects and interior designers and trying to get input on big things and little things, and just being so tired, but knowing it was such an important thing that you have to just push passed it.”

  Buy Photo

She credits the center’s successful construction to the model set by Jones County before Washington, as well as a number of talented people involved who were not raising infants at the time.

In the years since, the center has proved its potential. Pickens said the institution had saved area families roughly $6.6 million in college tuition.

That’s an especially big deal to the director, herself a first-generation college student who said she reached higher education thanks to the community college model.

“Students don’t know what they don’t know, if they’re unaware of the process and what’s next, it’s hard for them to ask the right questions,” she said. “It’s great to be able to help with some of their postsecondary planning, and make sure they’re on that right track.”

Pickens said she was proud of the difference the school made on its students lives.

  Buy Photo

Serving a variety of small, rural districts, she said centers like Washington’s made a big difference for high school graduates who otherwise might not recognize a career path as they reached adulthood.

“Coming here and having this facility close to the school, they know their friends are coming, they know their neighbor down the road is coming,” she said. “It’s a supportive, welcoming environment where they can try college, while in high school, and see that they are, in fact, college material and that they can be successful.”

One of the job’s perks is an occasional follow-up from a student years after their graduation, whether from Kirkwood or elsewhere. Pickens said those reunions were especially rewarding.

“Some of those stories are just wonderful,” she said. “Maybe they’ve moved on to Kirkwood after high school, maybe they went on to a different college or university, they’re out working in their career field … it’s so cool to see things like that.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com