BVU, Mary J. Treglia Community House Sign Strategic Partnership

Buena Vista University (BVU) and Mary J. Treglia Community House, of Sioux City, have become Strategic Partners, paving the way for a variety of educational benefits now available to employees of Mary J. Treglia Community House, a leader in addressing the needs of immigrants in Siouxland.

Under the Strategic Partnership initiative, Mary J. Treglia Community House employees, spouses/domestic partners and their families may receive grant funding to lower the overall cost of education while enrolled in classes at BVU’s Storm Lake campus. Partner grant funding also reduces the cost per credit hour for students enrolled in BVU’s convenient online/hybrid undergraduate programs or BVU’s online organizational leadership graduate program.

BVU professors and staff members will be made available for training programs, workshops, and more should administrators at Mary J. Treglia Community House seek those services and expertise.

“We are excited to be among the businesses and community leaders aligning with Buena Vista University through the Strategic Partnership,” says Jetske Wauran, President of the Mary J. Treglia Community House Board of Directors. “The ability for our employees to access higher education will serve to strengthen them in their lives and in their careers, mirroring the ways in which we strive to make self-sufficiency of each individual possible.”

Through education, Wauran says, those associated with Mary J. Treglia Community House will make Siouxland a stronger region as well.

Since 1921, staff and volunteers at Mary J. Treglia Community House have helped empower the community through cultural diversity efforts while serving the immigrant population of Siouxland through education, services, advocacy, and more. A wide range of services including, but not limited to, refugee services, translation and interpretation, classes for citizenship and ESL, have enabled hundreds of residents to acclimate themselves to life and work in and around Northwest Iowa.

BVU has had a long-standing partnership with Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City, as it relates to degree-completion programs. BVU has staff on the WIT campus to assist individuals who are searching for college program information, or current students who seek student success support.

BVU has helped transform the lives of dozens of families in recent years through the Clausen Family Education for Service Scholarship, an initiative whereby first-generation college students in Buena Vista County realize tuition discounts on a yearly basis. The Invest in Rural Iowa Scholarship, made possible by an anonymous BVU benefactor, offers a $5,000 annual scholarship for qualifying students from Northwest Iowa who demonstrate a commitment to serve their community upon their graduation.

“This is a wonderful development for BVU and for the employees and families of Mary J. Treglia Community House,” says Katie Smith, BVU Director of Strategic Partnerships. “To see staff members and their families receive a savings while continuing their education is rewarding. To see how a BVU education can help create stronger communities is transforming.”

“For more than a century, our employees have worked to help educate those in need,” Wauran concludes. “That work has changed lives and changed generations for the better. The Strategic Partnership with BVU represents another step in an educational process as we continue to shape a better Siouxland, one person at a time.”

For more information on Strategic Partnerships and BVU partner opportunities, please visit bvu.edu/strategic-partnerships or contact Katie Smith at SmithK@bvu.edu.