Northland Pioneer College

Breaths of wind kiss the majestic stone monoliths of Monument Valley, casting long shadows across the northern-most communities served by Northland Pioneer College. Deep river-cut canyons and “orange-bellied” Ponderosa pines mark the southern service-area boundary, nearly 200 miles, as the Golden Eagle flies, away.

Serving an area nearly as large as the state of West Virginia, yet with a population density averaging 10 per square mile, Northland Pioneer College is a taxpayer-supported, decentralized, comprehensive community college with four campuses, five satellite centers and numerous other delivery sites throughout Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona. Nearly half of NPC’s service-area population is Native American, residing on tribal nations — Diné (Navajo), Hopi and White Mountain Apache — making up nearly 40 percent of the College district’s land area.

Since its founding in 1974, distance education through technology-connected classrooms has been an essential instructional delivery modality. So presenting information about the programs and services available via a well-organized website was a necessity. NPC launched its site on Drupal 6 in 2007, and is now working with the team from Archetype 5 to migrate to a D8 platform. We are excited about the new features built into D8 and applaud the hard work and devotion of the Drupal community to bring it to reality.