Something for everyone
CER celebrated for range of offerings brought to community
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FAIRMONT--Today, Nov. 12, is widely known as National Community Education Day and serves as a time to celebrate the people who make lifelong learning programs possible. The Fairmont area is fortunate enough to have a community education and recreation (CER) program that's also able to offer recreational opportunities to people of all ages.
CER Director, Stephanie Busiahn, explained that a lot of communities have a community education program that focuses on GED and English Language Learner (ELL) programs, and then the recreation programs are under a city recreation department.
"It varies. We see a lot of communities throughout Minnesota that do both. A lot of times in smaller communities they're doing both," she said.
Busiahn has been in her current role for over five years. She joined in 2021, the year that Fairmont CER celebrated 50 years of having a presence in the community. Along with her are CER staff members Kris Seifert, who has been with CER about 27 years, and John Bartscher, who has been with it for about four years.
"And then we have a couple part-time ABE (adult basic education) instructors and countless instructors and volunteers," Busiahn said.
Of course, she said they are always looking for more volunteers and instructors.
"We're kind of seeing a shift. People are busy so there's a variety of things in a variety of areas where they can put their time and energy into," Busiahn explained. "The last couple of years we've seen some additional difficulties finding volunteer coaches specifically for T-ball and flag football. Those programs rely on parent volunteers and coaches."
They're both well-attended programs as Busiahn said the range for T-Ball is 60 to 87 kids and for flag football it's been 76 to 92 kids a season. Those numbers are broken into teams and each team needs about two volunteer coaches.
Busiahn recognized that it's good that there's so much interest in these programs, but that they need adults to help out with them.
Many of the programs that CER offers are possible because they have volunteers or instructors, what Busiahn likes to call champions, who step up and are willing to offer the program.
"It starts with a passionate person with an interest," Busiahn said."Marilyn Fritzinger has done batons. She was an avid baton twirler and has twirled most of her life and still loves it and wants to instill that in kids. She does a great job with that."
She said similarly, Deb Heinrich has done a phenomenal job with the Tiny Tots sports program for little kids and their guardians.
"She continues to do it because she loves it," Busiahn said.
Another passionate instructor who Busiahn said has brought about some new programs is Crystal Hanson with the addition of both an elementary cross country program and kids cross country race.
On the education side, Janice Novak has been offering health and wellness virtual classes which touch on topics like hormones and weight, acupressure and strength training. Nicki Welsh offers Social Club Simple, which are technology classes that touch on Canva, Chat GPT, Venmo and more.
There is also a law office based out of Windom that contacted Fairmont CER a number of years ago to offer estate planning classes.
"Those are the kinds of things that we get excited about. It comes from people that are willing to champion that. We would love to see more local businesses reaching out or partnering with us to provide some of that content," Busiahn said.
All of these offerings can be found inside CER's digital brochure at fairmont.k12.mn.us/o/cer. They put out a few seasonal brochures a year but the digital format allows them to edit information and programs as they go.
One notable thing 2026 has brought to CER is a location change. While they were located inside the Southern Minnesota Educational Campus (SMEC) building for about five years, they moved over the summer back into the Fairmont Elementary School, where they were previously housed, though now they're in a different spot, located right behind the front office.
"We continue to splash that we have moved and give our new office location. We're trying to let people know that we're in a different location but offer the same services. We are here connecting with the community and are wiling to explore and find new ideas and offerings," Busiahn said.
Along with this, they have a new monthly newsletter that can be signed up for on their webstore and then monthly offerings will be emailed directly to those who want to receive them.
Looking to the future, Busiahn said they always want to grow their programming and that there are some more adult classes they want to start offering.
"We've worked with the Fairmont Area Pickleball Association and they have an adult pickleball night now on Wednesday nights that you can register for monthly on our website," Busiahn explained.
She said the core concept of CER remains focused on lifelong learning and spreading the message that you're never too old to learn something new and you're never too old to teach someone something new.
"Whether you have an interest in sharing a passion or are looking for a new passion, we hope that we can be a spot that people think of and a resource that we can connect people with," Busiahn said.