Minnesota State College Southeast Opens $149 AI Classes in Red Wing

Minnesota State College Southeast will charge $149 for a three-Thursday AI workplace series starting October 1, 2026, in Red Wing. The same office is pairing it with a four-week nonprofit series that puts artificial intelligence next to fundraising and planning.

Katie Hardyman, director of Workforce Education in Red Wing, said both series are being offered for the first time and that they answer problems employers and community partners are hitting as AI changes daily work. The partner on the launch is Workforce Development, Inc., a private nonprofit that already runs job and training help through ten offices across Southeast Minnesota.

Two New Series on the Red Wing Campus in October

The AI class is titled AI Skills for Today’s Workplace. It meets Thursdays from 8 to 10 a.m. on October 1, 8 and 15, and the college says it will cover practical skills, time-saving methods, and how to use the tools without being reckless with other people’s information.

The Nonprofit Workforce Development Series runs Tuesdays from 9 to 11 a.m., October 6 through 27. Those four mornings mix strategic planning, fundraising, operations, and AI, with the stated aim of helping nonprofits add capacity without adding headcount.

THE TWO OCTOBER SERIES

Registration sits with the workforce education office in Red Wing at 308 Pioneer Road. Hardyman’s listed number is 651-267-7706, and her email is khardyman@southeastmn.edu.

These training opportunities are being offered for the first time this fall. Each directly addresses some of the current challenges that employers and community partners are encountering, especially as AI disrupts our workplace dynamics.

Katie Hardyman, Director of Workforce Education, Minnesota State College Southeast

WDI’s own services are free. The college is charging $149 a head for each series, so a shop or charity that sends staff is buying a short, scheduled class, not a grant program. WDI says each dollar invested in its clients returns $5 to the community in tax contributions and reduced public assistance, which is the pitch it uses for the rest of its work.

$149 Covers Six Hours of Workplace AI

Three Thursday mornings at two hours each come to six hours of AI class time. The nonprofit series is longer, eight hours over four Tuesdays, at the same $149 price.

That is enough time to practice prompts, talk through what not to paste into a chatbot, and try a few shortcuts on real tasks. It is not a certificate track, and it is not a career-change bootcamp. Hardyman framed the work as regional workforce education, the same desk that already sells customized training to manufacturers and health employers in Red Wing and Winona.

Minnesota State College Southeast reports that it provides credit and noncredit education to almost 6,000 people a year. The Minnesota State system around it includes 26 community and technical colleges and seven state universities, about 270,000 students, and the system has said its campuses already train more than 2,700 businesses and 130,000 people a year on workforce contracts. A $149 open-enrollment series is a small slice of that machine, built for people who can spare a weekday morning and a invoice that fits a shop’s training budget.

The college has been talking about AI in credit classes since at least 2024, when then-president Dr. Marsha Danielson wrote that instructors were already using the tools to draft curriculum and that one classroom rule was, “Use AI, but don’t use AI to be YOU.” These October series are a different product: noncredit, timed for people already on the job, and sold through workforce education rather than the catalog of majors.

Why Local Nonprofits Share the Catalog

The nonprofit series is the odd item on a workforce calendar, and it is the one that matches what charities keep reporting about their own staff. NTEN and The Bridgespan Group surveyed 917 nonprofit staff and executives from late April to mid-June 2026 for the 2026 State of Nonprofit AI. Use is common. Training is not.

THE NONPROFIT TRAINING GAP

• 98% using AI: Nearly all respondents said AI is used in some form at their organization, including tools baked into software they already pay for.
• 61% official: That share described organized pilots, team-wide use, or full integration, while 37% said use is still informal and individual, and 2% reported no work use at all.
• 57% with no AI budget: Executives said a dedicated AI budget is the most common missing piece, ahead of staff training on how to use the tools, which 37% said is not in place.
• 17% to 19% trained: Only that share of organizations, across budget sizes, said staff training is fully in place, a gap that barely moves even at shops with more money.

Staff and executives in that survey named the same two fixes, clearer guidance and actual training. Executives also listed staff capacity (34%), weak grasp of valid use cases (30%), and missing policies (29%) as the main brakes on putting AI to work. A separate measure in the same report found that only 22% of executives said training on safe and responsible AI use is fully in place, which is a narrower question than whether any staff training exists at all.

That is the hole a four-Tuesday series in Red Wing is trying to fill for local charities. Fundraising and planning are the work those shops already do. AI is being taught as another way to do it, not as a specialty hire. WDI is itself a nonprofit, so the partner on the launch is also a plausible customer for the material.

Minnesota State’s Free Google Certificates Skip Southeast

The $149 price looks different once you set it next to a program the Minnesota State system already runs. On January 15, 2026, the system said it had finished a first year with Google and the National Association of Higher Education Systems offering Google Career Certificates at no cost to students at nine of its colleges and universities. More than 350 students completed one or more certificates in that first year.

Minnesota State is one of 11 higher-education systems in that Microcredentials Community of Practice, part of the Google AI for Education Accelerator. The certificates cover cybersecurity, data analytics, IT support, and other job tracks. They also include AI Essentials.

WHAT GOOGLE’S AI ESSENTIALS INCLUDES

• Foundational skills: The system listed basic AI skills as the first piece of the AI Essentials microcredential.
• Prompting: The same listing names effective prompting techniques, the practical skill most short workplace classes try to teach.
• Responsible use: The third piece is responsible AI usage, the ethics and data-handling layer Hardyman also put on the Red Wing syllabus.

Minnesota State College Southeast is not on the nine-campus list. Rochester Community and Technical College is. So is Winona State University, which sits in the same river city as Southeast’s other campus. Jesse Mason, associate vice chancellor of academic affairs for Minnesota State, said the pilot let campuses try different ways to offer in-demand skills on top of a college program or a current job. Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google, said, “Every student deserves access to the AI skills needed to succeed in today’s job market.”

Red Wing’s $149 series is the local workaround. It is shorter than a Google certificate, it is not free, and it is aimed at employers and community partners rather than enrolled students collecting a co-curricular badge. It is also available on a campus the pilot did not pick.

After the Adults, a Saturday Teen Bootcamp

The adult classes are not the only AI training on the Red Wing calendar this fall. Red Wing Public Schools is already running Flight Path 2030, a district plan to put AI, computing, and data in front of every graduate, backed by a $3.2 million gift for Flight Path 2030 from Dwight Diercks, a 1986 Red Wing High School graduate and senior vice president of software engineering at NVIDIA, and his wife, Dian. The school board accepted the five-year pledge on July 28, 2025.

On August 3, 2026, the Mark Cuban Foundation, with Red Wing Public Schools, announced a free AI bootcamp for teens. Any student who will be at least 13 at the time of the bootcamp can apply, including students who are not enrolled in the district. Sessions run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, October 31, November 7 and November 14. The application window is August 1 through September 30, 2026, which closes the day before the college’s adult AI series begins.

RED WING’S FALL AI DATES

1. September 30, 2026: Application window closes for the Mark Cuban Foundation teen bootcamp.
2. October 1, 8 and 15, 2026: AI Skills for Today’s Workplace meets 8 to 10 a.m. at $149.
3. October 6 through 27, 2026: Nonprofit Workforce Development Series meets Tuesday mornings at $149.
4. October 31, November 7 and November 14, 2026: Free teen AI bootcamp, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Superintendent Bob Jaszczak said the teen bootcamp gives young people in the area a hands-on introduction and a chance to use the tools “responsibly, creatively, and with purpose.” The college series is the adult version of that sentence, sold to people who already have jobs and board packets. The K-12 money is larger. The $149 mornings are the layer that reaches the shops and charities that will hire those students later.

The Custom-Training Habit Behind the New Series

Hardyman’s office already writes classes to order. The college’s customized-training page lists needs assessments, program design, and delivery at a company site or on campus, and it names Hardyman for the Red Wing area and Jennifer Olson for Winona. The October series is that habit turned into an open calendar: a short, priced cohort instead of a private contract.

Danielson, who left the presidency on July 1, 2026, spent a March 10, 2026 campus note arguing that the college should stop treating AI as something students can dodge. She quoted Scott Fillman, the college information officer, on what the campus should offer local firms.

We need to be a place where local businesses seeking help with how to improve their operations can get the support to help them use AI to grow and flourish.

Scott Fillman, College Information Officer, Minnesota State College Southeast

Fillman has also made students explain their steps when they use AI on coding work, on the grounds that pasted output does not prove they understand the logic. “Students can copy and paste code, but that doesn’t demonstrate comprehension,” he said. “They need to demonstrate understanding and explain their logic.” That is the same responsible-use line the October syllabus is selling to people who will never take a credit course in web design.

Hardyman’s public goal for the college is smaller and more local. “Our goal at Southeast is to provide relevant training that supports the workforce needs of our region,” she said. The region, in this case, is Red Wing and the southeast Minnesota towns WDI already serves, where a manufacturer, a clinic, and a food shelf can send one or two people on a weekday morning and expense $149.

What a Thursday Morning Class Can Teach

The published description for AI Skills for Today’s Workplace is short: practical AI skills, time-saving techniques, and ways to raise productivity while using the tools responsibly. Six hours can cover how to write a better prompt, how to check an answer, and how to keep donor lists and personnel files out of a public chatbot. It cannot write a board policy, stand up a records rule, or replace the staff-capacity problem NTEN’s executives ranked first.

The nonprofit series has more room, eight hours, and a wider brief. Strategic planning, fundraising, and operations are the work those shops already struggle to staff. Putting AI in that same month treats the tools as a capacity question, which is how small charities actually meet new software: one or two people go to a class, then try it on the newsletter and the grant calendar.

People who want a named Google credential still have a path in the Minnesota State system, just not on this campus. People who want a free Saturday intro for a teenager have the Cuban Foundation dates in late October and November. The $149 Thursdays are for the third group, the one most AI product launches ignore: the office manager, the development director, the shop supervisor who can spare 8 to 10 a.m. and needs the tool to behave on a work laptop.

Hardyman is the contact the college lists for the Red Wing side of that bet, and the first Thursday is October 1, 2026.