Less than a year ago, Wade Steenhoek was senior vice president of operations at ARAG Insurance Co. About a month ago, he was sitting in the lobby of his new learning center on Delaware Avenue in Ankeny with one of the students, talking about her school day.

After learning that she scored high on her math test, Steenhoek said, “It made me feel like what we are doing is very valuable, and that’s the type of thing that you don’t get in corporate America.”

Steenhoek left his career in insurance last June, and a month ago opened the first Huntington Learning Center in Iowa. With the amount of money people are investing in supplemental educational resources today, Steenhoek expects to open more such centers in Central Iowa, expanding on Huntington’s base of more than 300 nationwide.

The learning center, said Steenhoek, “gives me the opportunity to do something very rewarding and is a tremendous value to the community,” which were his two goals when he left his job after working 16 years in the insurance industry. “This was a halftime of sorts in my career,” he said. “I had a great place to work. I really enjoyed it, but was just ready for a challenge to do something on my own.”

A few days after leaving his job, his family packed the Chevy Suburban and drove to the Black Hills. A week later, he and his wife, Julie, a teacher’s associate for children with special needs, and two kids, ages 10 and 6, decided to keep driving to Yellowstone National Park rather than return home. The vacation, said Steenhoek, was not only “the best vacation we’ve ever had,” but also gave him a chance to start brainstorming other career interests. He eventually settled upon education, possibly teaching at the postsecondary level, or something in children’s recreation.

After deciding on supplemental education a few months later, he chose to invest in a Huntington Learning Center franchise because of the company’s philosophy of working closely with local school systems and its program setup. “There’s a tremendous amount of support to a franchise system,” he said. “If you pick the right system, it can accelerate what you’re trying to do exponentially.”

From there, it took two months of intense training, mostly at Huntington’s corporate center in New Jersey, and about another two months of working with an operations manager on site, as well as investing his savings into start-up costs, to open the center.

Supplemental educational spending, Steenhoek said, “is a tremendously fast-growing segment. The growth in the industry was pegged at 15 percent last year, which is huge.”

Huntington’s program is designed to assess each student to determine his or her strengths and weaknesses and then design an individualized program from more than 900 pieces of learning material. Students then work individually or in a group of four with a teacher at least twice a week for about two hours.

The center has around six teachers and Steenhoek expects to have 25 when the center is at capacity with 125 students.

Though Steenhoek has already met with principals and administrators at Ankeny’s schools, he may consider setting up some after-school programs in the classrooms this fall.

He also plans to expand the number of Huntington centers throughout Central Iowa. “I think the concept is outstanding. There’s a tremendous need well beyond Ankeny,” he said. The centers have taken off on the East and West coasts and are now just starting to penetrate the Midwest, he said.

Steenhoek is also considering other business ventures in children’s recreation or entertainment after the market has been saturated with his learning centers. He may also seek a master’s degree in secondary education.

Though he works more hours than ever, he doesn’t seem to mind. It’s “extremely rewarding, because everything I do is what I want to do.”