WICHE Legislative Advisory Committee members Rep. Manny Castro of the CNMI and Rep. Mark Sanford of North Dakota State.
REPRESENTATIVE Manny Castro attended the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s Legislative Advisory Committee annual meeting. WICHE’s Legislative Advisory Committee 16 members work collaboratively to expand educational access and excellence for all residents of the West. The WICHE commissioners created the LAC in 1995 to inform the commission and staff about significant legislative issues related to higher education in the region.
WICHE was organized formally in 1951 as an intentional collaboration between state governments in the West, and launching an embryonic program of activities in 1953, WICHE has continuously and effectively served one mission: to expand access to high-quality higher education to the citizens of the West. In 2012 and under the leadership of then-Northern Marianas College President Dr. Sharon Y. Hart the CNMI was the first to join WICHE under the shared Pacific Islands membership open to all U.S. Pacific Territories and Freely Associated Sates. The CNMI has partnered with and benefited from WICHE through regional collaboration, resource-sharing, sound public policy, and innovation.
“We owe a great amount of thanks to Dr. Sharon Y. Hart, the late Gov. Eloy S. Inos, the late CNMI Scholarship Office Administrator Rose S. Pangelinan, our CNMI WICHE Commissioner NMC Vice President Frankie Eliptico, Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider and many others, for their vision and effort during the initial stages of this meaningful program, their work has help save CNMI families thousands of dollars in tuition cost, provide better opportunities and transform lives.”
104 CNMI residents of saved $1.3 million in 2019-20 through the Western Undergraduate Exchange and the Western Regional Graduate Program. These WICHE programs provide significant student savings on nonresident tuition at 170+ Western U.S. public colleges and universities.
In 2019-20 WICHE Student Access Programs provided the CNMI a 735% return on investment, relative to the state’s annual WICHE dues.
CNMI students and their families have saved $3.5 million since beginning by participating in WUE.
The Master Property Program helps institutions reduce their insurance premiums and improve their coverage. The MPP includes more than 170 campuses with total insured values of over $100 billion.
“In 2001 at the age of 14, after graduating from Hopwood Junior High School I made the difficult choice of moving to Oregon to further my Education. At that time, we did not have programs like WICHE, back then to obtain a better college tuition rate, many of us had to move to the U.S. mainland prior to completing high school. It was a difficult choice, but for every difficult choice there is a reward either immediate or long-term, and if it was not for that struggle, I would not be here in Arizona sitting at the table meeting with other State Legislators engaging in the discussion of higher education issues and strategizing for interstate/territory collaboration,” said Rep. Castro.
“Our number one asset in the CNMI is our human capital (our people). With our small and fragile island economy we cannot afford to be complacent, we must continue to synergize efforts and improve outcomes,” said Rep. Castro.
