Students at Huot can now earn credits from Plymouth State

LACONIA — Starting with the Class of 2027, students studying at the Huot Career and Technical Center will qualify for college credits from Plymouth State University.

The new program allows students who complete their full sequence of courses — usually two years of Huot classes — to earn as many as eight PSU credits. Some Huot classes will directly substitute for PSU courses; others will count as general electives.

Huot Director David Warrender said he approached admissions staff at PSU about 1.5 years ago, to establish an agreement similar to what Keene State College offers.

"Plymouth is obviously a destination for a lot of our students," Warrender said. "We knew that a lot of our students were interested in post-secondary study, and we have a lot of agreements in place with two-year schools, and that’s a great fit for a lot of our students."

Warrender said for some career pathways, students want to go directly to a four-year school, and Plymouth just "is the logical choice, just because of where they’re located."

"Students, whether they’re commuting from home or going up there to live, it’s obviously our local four-year college," Warrender said.

He said, at this point, it’s a relatively unique partnership, and expects PSU will broaden the program, to include other tech centers, such as those in Concord and Wolfeboro, in the future.

"If this works with Huot, it might work other places," he said.

Warrender said he appreciated the effort the college put into the partnership, from its admissions department, through its faculty, and up through its administration, "recognizing that this is a group of students who has a great chance to be successful up up at PSU," he said. "We’re really excited to see how this works out for students, moving forward."

The new partnership, approved just a few weeks ago, is a multi-year agreement.

"Any one of these agreements, we have to periodically go through and update them, because, you know, their majors change or our classes change."

He gave the example of "some early work" Huot has done to determine how to offer an emergency medical technician certification, or something in the electrical field.

"We don’t know if that’s going to be next year or down the road, but those are two things that we’re actively researching at this moment in time," Warrender said.

Huot already offers a number of career pathways for students, from health and business, to engineering, automotive, and culinary arts. Some classes align exactly with specific courses at the college, such as those in business.

"Every one of our business classes directly aligns to a class at PSU," and will earn a college credit upon completion, he said. "Sometimes, some students may do two years here in a program, but that program doesn’t match something which Plymouth offers. They can still get a general elective credit."

"I guess the other part of it is, we look at this as hopefully another way of incentivizing students to consider staying in New Hampshire after graduation," Warrender said. "A lot of students leave to go off to college, and they never come back. So, anything we could do to kind of keep them in New Hampshire, and save them some money in the process, we definitely want to try doing."

The Huot Career and Technical Center, on the campus of Laconia High School, serves students attending Laconia, Gilford, Belmont, Inter-Lakes, Franklin, Newfound Regional and Winnisquam Regional high schools.

"We’re excited to see where this goes next year, once we get some students start to really take advantage of it."