LBHC student Janetta Jarvis drives a Mack truck pulling a gravel trailer. Graduates from the college’s CDL program find employment on and around the Crow reservation.

There is a great need for skilled workers on the Crow Indian Reservation. In 2021, the Little Big Horn College (LBHC) established a partnership with Montana State University-Northern to provide apprenticeship students weekly in-person labs online. LBHC offers a building trades certificate—a one-year, 34-credit credential in building trades that prepares students for successful employment in the construction industry. While there is limited enrollment, the certificate trains students in building maintenance, carpentry, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and home improvement and repair. The building trades program follows industry-wide standards and curriculum and provides students with an overview of the industry, relevant laws, regulations, qualifications, preventative maintenance, controls, and safety. Moreover, students gain hands-on experience with various projects.

Currently, LBHC has an agreement with Montana State University-Northern to teach electrical and plumbing courses. National and/or state legal eligibility requirements for licensure or entry into the building trades profession mean that if students opt for the carpentry apprenticeship, they need to complete 4,000 apprenticeship hours in the workplace before applying for a journeyman license. If they opt into the electrical and plumbing apprenticeships, they need to complete 7,000-7,500 apprenticeship hours in the workplace, at which time they can apply to become licensed electricians and plumbers.

Santee Real Bird saw the need for plumbers on the reservation. His grandfather was a journeyman carpenter who built homes from scratch in the 1960s and 1970s. His grandfather piqued Santee’s interest in the trades while helping him out on projects as a young man. There was a sufficient number of Native electricians and carpenters at the time he was assisting his grandfather, but plumbers were hard to come by. Santee therefore decided to enroll in the LBHC trades program with an emphasis in plumbing. Now, he is a newly minted graduate with a plumbing certificate from MSU-Northern. Santee currently works as an apprentice plumber on an Indian Health Service multi-million-dollar construction project for the health professions in Crow Agency. One day, Santee hopes to create his own business after he becomes a journeyman licensed plumber.

LBHC also offers a 31-credit certificate in highway construction that prepares students for successful employment in that industry. As with building trades, it is a limited enrollment program. There are two foci of the program—truck driving and heavy equipment operation. Truck driving follows the industry-wide standards and curriculum, and by the end of the program graduates are proficient in semi-truck operation. The heavy equipment focus offers an overview of the industry, safety, laws, regulations, qualifications, preventative maintenance, controls, and basic experiences and skills in the operation of heavy equipment, including use of a backhoe, wheel loader, and mini excavator. Students gain hands-on experience with simulators and heavy equipment alike. The LBHC trades program pays for tuition, tools, books, and assistance through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovative Opportunities Act.

Most recently, LBHC is proposing a new 8,790-square-foot vocational trades center educational facility to be housed on recently purchased property, which also includes the agriculture program and food sovereignty garden. The new trades center will house technical educational programs for construction trades such as welding, plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, HVAC, diesel mechanics, and other building trades programs. The college is aiming for the trade center project to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification at the platinum level.

The building trades program has various partnerships in workforce development for skilled workers. The Apsaalooke National Housing Authority, which oversees 300 units of HUD homes on the Crow reservation, hires LBHC graduates for on-the-job training. There are also Nativeowned construction companies which hire students from the program. Moreover, the Tribal Employment Rights Organization contracts with LBHC’s CDL trucking and heavy equipment operators for non-Native vendors that do road construction on the reservation. The Crow tribe has a 638 transportation program from the BIA that oversees reservation roads, which also offers on-the-job training for students.

Last year, students in the building trades had the opportunity to construct a tiny home. The project was designed by the students in a class titled Building Design in Autodesk, a two-semester class in which students learn how to design blueprints on a computer. This Autodesk system shows how to implement electric, plumbing, and heating in a home. The tiny home took six months to complete. Now, it is the crowning jewel of the program. The tiny home will be raffled off to pay for more construction on future tiny homes. With the vocational trades center educational facility there will be a separate unit within the new building to house the tiny home program which the students can work on all year, as Montana weather is marked by snow and inclement conditions for six months out of the year.

Finally, the LBHC program has produced two apprentices and one journeyman electrician who has gone on to create his own electric company. LBHC has also produced one journeyman plumber and a graduating apprentice, and there are numerous carpenters in the field working on various construction projects across the reservation. CDL and heavy equipment operation have multiple graduates working in state, county, and tribal positions. These stories of success illustrate how Little Big Horn College is paving new opportunities for its students and uplifting the Crow Nation.