Since Iowa Central Community College began offering a form of financial aid to prison inmates called Second Chance Pell about four years ago, 470 of them have taken classes.

The college has issued more than 9,000 credits to inmates of the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility and the North Central Correctional Facility in Rockwell City. College degrees have been awarded to 50 inmates.

College officials believe a lot more inmates could be earning credits and degrees if a bigger and better training building was available at the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. So on Tuesday, Neale Adams, the college’s dean of business and industrial technology, went to Des Moines to talk to lawmakers about that possibility.

”If we had a bigger building and a building that is better configured to the educational purpose, we would have the capacity to train a lot more inmates,” Adams said Tuesday evening.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to ”create positive citizens once they’re released.”

On Tuesday, he spoke to the House-Senate Infrastructure Appropriations Committee about the need for a better facility.

”Our goal is to put it on their radar right now,” Adams said.

Iowa Central leaders want lawmakers to designate some money from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund to pay for the building, according to Jim Kersten, the college’s vice president of external affairs and government relations.

The Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund is the state government’s share of gambling revenue that is set aside for building projects.

During his presentation, Adams explained the Second Chance Pell program, which began in August 2016.

”We’re the only post-secondary institution in the state of Iowa that can offer Pell grants to people who are incarcerated,” he said.

Inmates can use those grants to pay for classes in welding, supply chain management, carpentry, baking and pastry arts, and industrial machining.

The space now available for those classes at the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility is very small, according to Adams. In his presentation to the lawmakers, he reported that the welding program usually has 40 students per semester, but there are just five welding booths in which they can work.

The committee took no action on the proposal Tuesday. Kersten said future action would probably come in the form of an amendment to a spending bill.