Did you know how many different career opportunities there are in the field of Criminal Justice? Did you know that for the past 28 springs the MPTC Criminal Justice instructors have been hosting a Career Day to help students explore?

Students spend the day engaging in professional communications, networking, and participating in and observing mock interviews with community partners from: Fond du Lac, Washington, Dodge, Green Lake, and Winnebago County Sheriffs, Fond du Lac and Oakfield Police, State of WI Department of Corrections, and U.S. Probation. Criminal Justice Instructor Joan Barfield said, “The many available jobs and career opportunities in this high demand law, public safety, and security field can be confusing! This day is great with experiential learning for our students to get a clearer picture of all their choices so they can imagine success!”

Check out the Criminal Justice Associate Degree!

As part of the Fond du Lac Area Women’s Fund, Fond du Lac Says No More! project, to prevent violence against women and children, the Women’s Fund is launching the Green Dot Bystander Intervention Project to make Fond du Lac safer! Green Dot specifically educates on 3 core tactics for intervention: Direct, Distract, Delegate.

In November, 2018 – 40 area volunteer trainers were certified in Green Dot and are now being sent out into the FDL area community to educate and build the collective “we” who will all make a difference!

What can you do?

*Check out the info on the little teal table at MPTC FDL Campus near the Career Center

*Attend a bystander intervention workshop

*Bring a Green Dot workshop to your business or school

*Share Green Dot with family, friends and co workers

No one has to do everything if we all do something!

#westandupfdl

#dontstandby

For more info contact: 920-322-8778 or greendotfdl@gmail.com

Last month, first semester Moraine Park nursing students helped residents get ready for their annual prom at the Fond du Lac St. Francis Home.

The students used their clinical time to provide hair and nail care, and dress the residents for their big event! The students enjoyed the one-on-one time to pamper the residents and give personalized care.

St. Francis Home hosts the resident prom each spring with a live music from a local high school band and invites family members to participate. So much fun!

For more program information, visit morainepark.edu/programs.

Nursing students in Instructor Michele Mengert’s Mental Health and Community Concepts course recently completed their community advocacy projects as part of our Spring, 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 17 students spent over 80 hours researching and collaborating with community partners to learn more about planned parenthood, poverty, women & infants, suicide, domestic violence, opioid abuse, water quality, 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 May 17.

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

Moraine Park Technical College has presented Serenity Hospice with its 2019 Community Partnership Award. This award recognizes a community non-profit or business partner organization who has gone above and beyond in their role of working with Moraine Park students in service learning opportunities.

Serenity Hospice is committed to providing the highest quality of care with a multidisciplinary team, serving patients and their families through every stage of end of life care. Moraine Park Medical Assistant students are important members of the hospice team! Volunteers are specially trained to provide support to the patient and family such as socialization, visitation, and helping with administrative tasks such as scanning, filing, alphabetizing, faxing, data entry, scheduling and collating. In 2019, MPTC student service learning volunteers spent over 240 hours at Serenity Hospice!

Ashley Wissinger, Volunteer & Bereavement Coordinator for Serenity Hospice said, “Thank you so much for this award!  We’ve had a lot of wonderful student volunteers from Moraine Park. The award is lovely and is proudly displayed. It was so great to meet your team and put faces with names!  It is truly an honor to work with the Moraine Park students.  We appreciate everything you and your team do to ensure your students are successful.”

Moraine Park Technical College works to bring quality education to the students, which in turn will benefit the communities where they live and work. Students who participate are required to log their volunteer hours, which count towards earning a Service-Learning Award.  Opportunities such as this allow students to make community connections prior to graduation and work through real-life scenarios. The partnership created by Moraine Park Technical College and Serenity Hospice will continue to benefit both of our organizations, the student volunteers, and the patients and families that are being served.

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

On April 23, MPTC President Bonnie Baerwald and Student Community Impact Coordinator Anne Lemke, were very excited to receive the Partner In Excellence Award from the Boys & Girls Club of the Tri-County Area

Center Director Mindy Collado said, “Thank you so much for attending our Great Futures Celebration and for all of your hard work with the Dream Big Initiative!”

Teen Futures Coordinator Carrie Govek said, “We are so delighted with the opportunities Dream Big has offered the teens in our Career Launch program and we look forward to continuing this partnership.”

Club CEO Jason Presto said, “Dream Big is so amazing! We are very thankful for the way MPTC is introducing our members to opportunities they may be interested in or may have never even known was an option for them. This school year they learned about careers in Medical Assistant, Criminal Justice, Health and Wellness, Welding, and Automotive!

Moraine Park Technical College is committed to community engagement and student success.  The College supports these commitments through the opportunity for students to participate in service learning and apply their classroom knowledge to an applicable, real world environment. 

Last year, MPTC started a service learning awards program where students can track their service hours, submit their reflections, and earn a Bronze Award for 25 hours, Silver Award for 50 hours, Gold Award for 100 hours, or Presidents Award for 200 hours of service. In the 2018-19 school year 112 students logged over 2,800 hours of service impacting 138 area community partners! 15 students earned awards in December and 28 students earned awards in May.

Congratulations to the spring 2019 award winners!

Bronze Award Winners

Completing 25-49 hours of service learning.

• Gwendolyn Redmon, Medical Assistant
• Kayla Tiedke, Medical Assistant
• Stephanie Munro, Medical Assistant
• Kelly Loeper, Medical Assistant
• Mackenzie Dressel, Medical Assistant
• Robin Hanson, Medical Assistant
• Yasmine Albert, Medical Assistant
• Kristin Auchtung, Medical Assistant
• Summer Benn, Medical Assistant
• Kayla Bunker, Medical Assistant
• Rachel Dobberphul, Medical Assistant
• Chelsea Herriges, Medical Assistant
• Paige Langlois, Medical Assistant
• Roberto Mondragon, IT Software Developer
• Jaimi TerLaan, Medical Assistant
• Delaney Tisdale, Medical Assistant
• Brooke Wightman, Nursing        

Silver Award Winners

Completing 50-99 hours of service learning.

• Erin Bunch, Business Management
• Stephanie Darkow, Medical Assistant
• Traci Hauge-Rueter, Medical Assistant
• Jessica Hendrickson, Business
• Kimberly Lindemann, Medical Assistant
• Gabrielle Schumacher, Business
• April Weisinger, Medical Assistant

Gold Award Winners

Completing 100-199 hours of service learning.

• Abigail Donath, Business Management
• Brett Hebert, Corrections        
• Sara Tallman, Medical Assistant
• Renee Vnuk-Uhrman, Medical Lab Technician

On April 20, 2019 the Waupun High School Promise Program students came to meet MPTC EMS students and learn about Emergency Medical Services careers!

Nick Clarenbach, Waupun High School Special Education At Risk Instructor said, ” Thank you so much for this opportunity. The students learned a lot and really enjoyed the entire experience! They were talking about it all the way home!”

The Dream Big project started last year with Boys and Girls Club of Fond du Lac teens learning more about the over 100 careers available through MPTC.  This year, Dream Big expanded throughout the MPTC district to include Boys and Girls Club of the Tri-County Area (Berlin, Green Lake County) and Waupun High School.  This is a great community partnership opportunity for Moraine Park students to showcase their degree programs and practice service learning  and for teens to get excited about their many career choices!

Community wide planning for the Bike Friendly West Bend Bike Rack project began in the 2015-16 school year when representatives from Bike Friendly West Bend, and Moraine Park Technical College came together to create a partnership with a mission of service learning for student success and creating a more bike friendly culture for citizens of Washington County.

As of this May, 2019 Since that time 33 bike racks have been designed and built in partnership with Mercury Marine steel donations, Moraine Park Mechanical Design student designs, Moraine Park Welding and Fabrication student builders, Hartford Finishing painters, and Bike Friendly West Bend volunteers marketing, selling and distributing the bike racks to area businesses. In the final step of the partnership for each bike rack, $200 from the sale of the rack is donated back to the Moraine Park Foundation “FACT” scholarship program for manufacturing degree students. The FACT Initiative provides area manufacturers with direct access to manufacturing program students, expedites the time from degree to workforce, strengthens the appeal of manufacturing-related careers, grows enrollment in manufacturing-related programs and unites manufacturers, educators, and students. To date the Bike Rack Project has donated $4,200 back to the FACT scholarship!

So far, 34 students have gained valuable real life experience from this service learning project. This school year students spent 141 service hours to manufacture 12 more bike racks!

Andrew Schumacher of Bike Friendly West Bend said: “The partnership between Moraine Park Technical College, Bike Friendly West Bend and Mercury Marine is a microcosm of how a localized economy can work and thrive. Moraine Park’s willingness to design and fabricate custom bike racks resulted in Mercury Marine donating raw materials. Mercury Marine’s donation helps support students who gain real world experience, which benefits companies like Mercury Marine. Those students, work through real world problems, making them more valuable to local businesses. Students who choose to work locally after graduation, have helped enhance a much needed bicycle infrastructure, which they may directly benefit from. The enhancement of the bicycle infrastructure helps Bike Friendly West Bend satisfy its mission, which helps create more vibrant communities, attracting residents and visitors, further supporting the local economy. The synergy created is a model for a sustainable, local economy and education system.”