About Eagle Nest Enterprises

Eagle Nest Enterprises was founded in 2020 during the height of the dumpster fire now known as Covid to serve high school students who no longer had access to in person learning. But it was not to last. Thanks to the inept leaders of the Oregon Higher Education Commission, they determined that Eagle Nest Enterprises was illegally teaching people career enhancing skills. We can’t have renegade programs giving people options outside of the fine oversight of the democratic republic of Oregon operating without their blessing (Read: licensing fees)! We ended up paying a fine that they spent over $14,000 of your Oregon taxpayer money to collect, and they declared victory over the evil unlicensed school and patted themselves on the back for protecting Oregonians and put an end to us teaching people how to weld.

So now all we do is teach CDL skills on a time limited basis, which they still believe is impossible, but at least they are leaving us alone so far.

Lead instructor David Richards has over twenty years of teaching experience working with high school students and adults.  David got the first CDL issued in Albany Country, Wyoming in 1990 and has kept it active for over 35 years. He graduated in 1993 from the University of Wyoming with a bachelors in Technology Education and pivoted to engineering work for Wagner Mining Equipment, and later Union Pacific Railroad. He returned to teaching flight instruction and public schools, and later finished a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instructional Design in 2023. Fired from public teaching for not taking the Covid pokes, he opened Eagle Nest Enterprises in 2021 and continues to build and maintain all of our fleet vehicles while staying heavily involved in local community outreach for Career and Technical Education causes.

Why we are different

Our class size is One-On-One focusing on individualized personal instruction. What that allows us to do is to take each student’s incoming background and start building an individualized plan of attack for maximum efficiency.

Them:

The State of Oregon HECC dictates that approved career schools do a minimum of 160 hours of program time, but that is pure idiocy and out of touch with what quality training by content experts can accomplish. For example: They count sitting students in the back of a truck watching somebody else drive as effective instruction. They count sitting in the DMV line to get your permit as program time. They count reading the Oregon CDL book to your in a classroom as program time. They count standing around watching somebody else back up the truck as instructional time. Despite whatever background you come in with, you’re going to do 160 hours to make the Oregon HECC happy.

Us:

Businesses can’t afford to waste time like that. If you come in with a prior background and do your homework, you will be in and out efficiently just as soon as you prove the competence categories as required by the federal ELDT rule. Typically, your lessons are two hours a day, then you go back to work and assimilate what we did. Every session is maximized content transfer and intense. No passive sitting in the back of the truck, no sitting at a desk while people lecture, this task focused sprint is hands on learning in real world conditions. Education psychology has a term for the very effective methodology applied at Eagle Nest Enterprises: Graduated Release of Responsibility.(GRR) Controlled environmental conditions with increasingly more complicated tasks are progressively introduced until the student is driving in city traffic with very low levels of stress being the goal. The capstone to the instruction is demonstrating to the state’s contracted third-party testers mastery of your new skills on a practical test.