PERSONALLY VISITED BY STAFF –
Northwest Renewable Energy Institute is a product of International Air and Hospitality Academy, Inc. which is an accredited school by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology ACCSCT. NWREI opened its doors July, 13 2009 and had their first graduating class in December. The course is 6 months long and covers everything you need to know to get in the door as a wind energy technician. The campus was good in size and has a carrying capacity of roughly 250 students (was being expanded during our tour). Classrooms were good in size with a modern day feel, with new computer, brand new equipment (near $1 million dollars invested) and nicely lit including natural sunlight from the skylights in several rooms. Staff there was GREAT, very friendly and appeared to be very knowledgeable and professional. Met with the director of the institute Tracy Rascoe, my time and talk with him was quite an experience, very nice, he expressed a genuine interest in the true progress of the institute and its students. As for being a new school, no placement figures could be established. The school is located at Vancouver, Washington.
Corporate Office/Campus
2901 East Mill Plain Boulevard
Vancouver, WA 98661
Phone: 360.695.2500 • 800.868.1816
Fax: 360.992.4340
Click Here to visit their facebook page
4 positive user reviews 
4 negative user reviews.
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Great!
The program at NW REI is excellent. It is a short 6 month, high intensive learning program. The entire staff is excited about getting their students/trainees to succeed. It is well worth the time, effort, and funds to attend NW REI wind turbine technician training program.
I smell a bogus whiner in Bob. The course is nowhere near $20,000.00. Do not expect any school to find you a job these days. If you do your are foolish and lazy.
Found the school to very educational, lots of material packed into a short course. Was a little worrisome towards the end of the course, due to lack of responses to resumes/applications that I put in. I was fortunate and was hired on just after a month of graduating with a large manufacture, however, some guys were not so fortunate. Currently I believe 2/3 of the class got a job, and my class graduated August 18th, 2010. Brother went to Airstreams in California which is a 30 day course and was hired on with same company actually on his third week in, they seem to have a larger placement rate from guys I spoke to at orientation and that I have seen.
I am enrolled to attend this program. The cost is about 12,000… not 20,000. You can get financial aid to attend.
When researching schools I found this one. I attended an informational meeting and was sold on the program because they said that they help place you with a company. So I did the program, graduated with honors, and now I have been out of school for 6 months and no job. I have found that I would have been better equiped doing a two year program for electrical at the community college and not racking up the financial aid bills. The school was definetly informational, and the teachers were nice, but I am meeting a lot of resistance when calling the staff who is supposed to have “insider” information on which companies are hiring. These are the employees who are supposed to help get you a job. They do not return my calls and never answer their phones. And yes I have been applying to companies, and have had a few interviews, but because I lack an electrical or military background I just haven’t found a job. In my class of twenty two people only 4 have found employment. At this point I am looking into going to the community college to get my electrician license and try again. I say save your money and go elsewhere.
I attended NW-REI graduating in mid-2010. The course work was very informative with excellent staff. Placement was all the hype and as far as I can tell they must be struggling to keep accreditation. I think 6-8 of 20 in my class were placed. I graduated 2nd in my class with a 4.23 GPA and perfect attendance. The career center says my resume looks good, and I am doing everything they have said to get into wind. I have looked for work a total of 5 months and have placed 70-100 resumes with no call back. The career center says they will follow up on the contacts I make and I have not been offered even an interview. If anyone knows where to check their actual placement rates I’m curious. I can’t get a straight answer and there are conflicting opinions. With $12k in loans I’m now paying on I’m concerned.
I am attending wright now i am 3 months in to the course, so far i have found it to be a spoon feeding session and they seem to concentrate on learn this because i say so! more than the why or how or the real workings of the topic i feel tricked we did tencioning and torking and fino out they is no real certification that is acreddited in the industry, they say metallurgy but when we start we are told this is in no way a metallurgy class! same for mechanics and all of there other courses! i feel i havve wasted a collosel amount of monney and time in attending this school under false advertising and i hope you read this before attending ! i will post again further down the line ! and will include my name class number etc.. also it is hard to get any straight ancer concerning there acredditation and the true reconigtion of there course to the wind industry !
I cringed to read the above post. I disagree with the whole spoon feeding bit. I found that some instructors were worried about it seeming TOO easy – and wanting to make the material more challenging so they would word tests in a confusing way then throw tons and tons of material at you and quiz you on it two days later. My GPA never dropped under a 3.9 but I WORKED for that – I never felt spoon fed – some things were genuinely challenging and some instructors were just so good at explaining the material you’d be an idiot not to understand it. My favorite classes were mechanical, electrical, and metallurgy… some of my classmates would throw hydraulics in that mix.. /disagree. Also the guy above is lying because metallurgy is the LAST class you take at the school so he would be six months into the program not three… and why the EFF can’t he spell??!! That is beyond pathetic… I don’t think he would get hired as a wind tech anyway because he won’t be able to write the SERVICE REPORTS. Freak…
All that said – yeah… I don’t really have any complaints about the school – except that the job market isn’t quite what they said it was.
Im a student and ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS DON’T BELIEVE WHAT THIS SCHOOL TELLS YOU NOT A DAMN THING
School sucks pick a different one to go to
First off, anyone who is considering going to this school please think again.. The “Job placement” is a line of crap! They do not help you find jobs at all, they e-mail you a couple times a month and recently I have been geeting email on jobs for the oil fields and for HVAC NOT Wind Tech, I went to school for 6 months to be a wind tech NOT to work in the oil rigs!! The owner of this school is not very nice, he fired the lady who USED TO help with job placement and he is doing it himself now, he is to old to be handling this kind of thing and not to mention if you have any sort of bad driving record he will ask you why you even went to school, and he will wonder why you got accepted, even though the administration office has seen your record and had no problem with it! The guy is a rich jerk who charges way to much for this school, IF you have any experience with HVAC , Mechanics, Electrical and or troubleshooting, you DON’T even need to go to this school, you can get a job with the turbines no problem with some experience. Please, if you do go to this school keep in mind that if you want to get a job afterwards you will have to travel and talk to companies face to face, over the internet you will very rarely ever have any luck as a lot of people are looking for work. I have put on over 7thousand miles on my truck since graduating 2 months ago, I have interviewed a lot but I do not have electrical experience as compared to the other 20 people who are applying that do. The teachers at ths shool are very cool and they teach great, however I was hoping for a little more hands on training and they go through things so fast it is hard to stay on track especially if you have been out of school for a few years. If your willing to commit yourself to traveling to all the wind farms (that are hard to find their addresses online) to get a job, and spend 12k then you will do alright, but if you are lazy and do not like hard work (climbing up 300ft towers 3 times a day) and you are not willing to travel to find yourself a job then do not do it. If you have any experience in hvac eletrical mechanical, hydraulics and troubleshooting then go ahead and start applying, you don’t need the training, most companies pay for your schooling (online classes, send you to chicago for 2wk training, etc) good luck!
A most interesting mix of comments. I can see some points of honesty and others not so. However, I speak from experience on this part. Yes the school is short and rather intensive, they told me this before I enrolled. It was dificult at first, (havent been in school for 20 years) but I did it, perfect attendance and Honor Roll. As far as job placement goes, if you read the paper, listen to radio or watch T.V. you will know the market is tough right now. You have to do more than apply for a job. You will have to go the extra mile about polish the resume. The lady mentioned above, in Carreer Development did her job well. I was offered employment 4 weeks out of school. The funny part is I only applied to 4 companies, multiple locations of course. So for those that want to enhance what they already have and get the opportunity to work in Wind, go to this school. If you want to skate through life and expect someone to just hand you a job because you dont feel some one held your hand, by all means stay on the sidelines
School is a joke. Been out of school for 6 months now without a single call from the school. They said that they would check up with you and call you with job leads, etc…bunch of BS.
School work was easy, almost too easy.
About 3 months into it, almost our whole class had figured out that we just got scammed.
No jobs, no interviews, no phone calls. School is borderline scam!
If I knew now what I didn’t know then, I would not have joined this school.