About Us

It seems hard to believe, but the Aberdeen Area Career Planning Center has been in Aberdeen for 20 years. The office was originally located on Third Ave. In early 1987, and in 1988 we moved off Third Ave. to the South Main Street location. This nearly doubled our space, and gave us a real classroom for the first time. At this time, we began to expand our GED program, and looked for ways to serve the community in a broader sense, including offering summer programs for the first time. We began offering a wider range of Adult Ed/GED services/hours and began laying the groundwork for our Office Technology program by equipping our classroom with desktop computers.

During the 10+ years we were on Main Street, our Office Technology program expanded, we began to offer wire feed welding courses on the NSU campus, and began a project in partnership with the Aberdeen Public school/Alternative Learning Center to provide computer classes and life skills activities to their students. This, in turn, led to our using graduate students from NSU as interns with these students. Many of those interns were hired as full time Career Counselors. It was also during this time that our summer program (project ACHIEVE) expanded to communities outside Aberdeen. At one point, over 50 youth were involved each summer. During our last few years on Main, we began to offer classes to prepare for the written portion of the Commercial Drivers License (CDL). This has evolved over the years into the classroom and driving program we have today.

Our years on Main also saw the expansion to the city of Mobridge. Due to the closing on the Lemmon Career Learning Center, the Mobridge office was left in limbo. The Board of the AACPC decided to bring them under our wing. Mobridge has allowed us to include a new array of services, including Common Sense Parenting, Corrective Thinking, Adult Ed/Literacy, summer programs and community ed. classes.

In 1999, we again moved our location, from 421 S. Main to 420 S. Roosevelt which is our current location within the Dept. of Labor. This wonderful arrangement puts us in direct contact with our primary service partner, the Career Center of Aberdeen. We have seen our biggest growth since this move, and it also the first time our operating budget exceeded 1 million dollars per year.

In the past 5 years, we have developed several unique summer programs, added the Aberdeen Workforce Development Center (a huge thanks to the Aberdeen Development Corp.), expanded the Office Technology program, moved our wire feed welding training, developed both a Carpentry and Electrician training program, expanded our CDL program, added staff to serve the Mike Durfee State Prison, added and expanded an EVENSTART family literacy program, developed an Adult Ed/GED program in Eagle Butte and began service to the Juvenile Detention Center on a daily basis.
So the next question would be what are we going do in the future? Whatever it is, it'll be based on what the community tells us it needs. Our goal, our mission, is to serve the citizens of our region with the most comprehensive and targeted array of services that we can, and that they need. The first 20 years of the AACPC have been ones of growth and expansion to meet our communities' needs, and the next 20 will continue those efforts.