Nursing students in Instructor Michele Mengert’s Mental Health and Community Concepts course recently completed their community advocacy projects as part of our Fall, 2019 service learning opportunities. Michele said, “students are purposefully working to learn community oriented nursing. We want to target prevention as a priority. Nurses need to understand how to advocate for specific populations of people and have knowledge of the resource programs in your community that you can partner with to help your patients.”

This semester 20 students spent over 100 hours researching and collaborating with community partners to learn more about parenting, fostering, opioid addiction, poverty, developmental disabilities, domestic violence, sexual assault, and more. Students formulated detailed advocacy plans to address how a nurse could help a community identify and address these issues, providing education, awareness, advocacy and resources. Students gathered data to help determine strengths and weaknesses in their own communities. Project presentations were held on December 20.

Congratulations on all of this great work on important community issues!

Envision Fond du Lac’s 2020 Career Connections, held January 7, 8, 9, officially wrapped up Tuesday evening with a debrief meeting encompassing school, business and MPTC representatives. The overwhelming consensus from the committee was that “year four was the best Career Connections yet!”  Presenters offered more interactive sessions than ever before, student movement from room to room was smooth, and some minor tweaks to the welcome sessions created the positive results the committee had hoped for.

Of course, none of these successes would have been possible without all of you! We had more than 100 MPTC employees fill 190 timeslots, which included welcoming presenters, guiding students to their assigned rooms and ensuring students got safely to their buses. If you were one those 100-plus – thank you, thank you!

A special thank you also goes out to our housekeeping staff for their efforts with room set up and take down, to our instructional technology staff who ensured room technology was ready to go, and to our facilities staff who helped in so many various ways!

So, again, we say “thank you” for helping Moraine Park ensure those who entered our doors during those three days, left our college with a new appreciation for what we have to offer.

Take a look at Career Connections 2020 “By the Numbers!”

·         3 Days – January 7, 8, 9

·         2,100 7^th and 8^th Grade students

·         6 School Districts

·         7 Private Schools

·         65-plus area businesses

·         130 area business presenters (including several MPTC faculty)

·         80-plus career areas highlighted

·         100-plus MPTC employees

·         10 Envision Greater Fond du Lac Team members

For more information on Moraine Park, visit morainepark.edu.