From left to right, Students Abby Siegel, Lori Kapellen, Kindra Luedtke and Instructor Amy Harmsen
From late March to mid May, Amy Harmsen’s Meeting and Event Planning students spent 36 hours of service learning working on the annual Portfolio Showcase Event featuring MPTC Web Developer and Graphics students. The Showcase was held on May 15 at Fond du Lac Campus. Event Management students were responsible for ordering food, creating a room layout, coordinating technology, communicating with marketing for event promotion, connecting with participants on power needs, set up, monitoring, and take down of the event. In addition, the students helped promote the first annual High School Art Contest and upcoming Fond du Lac area Graphic and Interactive Arts Festival.
The Event Management course is required for an Administrative Professional Associate Degree and focuses on coordinating and planning successful business events. Students develop skills in scheduling, preparing, organizing, managing and participating and engage in all aspects of the event management process including goal setting and objectives, establishing event themes, planning event logistics, financial management, promotion and event evaluation.
Congratulations on a successful Portfolio Showcase learning and sharing event !
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!
From left to right: Medical Assistant student Stephanie Darkow, Serenity CAPSW Administrator Kathy Weston, Serenity Volunteer & Bereavement Coordinator Ashley Wissinger, Serenity OTR Owner Barb Mueller, Instructor Eric Ziebell and Instructor Sarah Chojnacki
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
Promise Student Award left to right: Promise Mentor Barb Brown, Director of College Advancement Dana Bourland, Promise Student Brett Hebert, President Bonnie Baerwald, Dean of General Studies Brenda Raad, Student Community Impact Coordinator Anne Lemke, College Advancement Assistant Joan BrezinskyMedical Assistant Student Awards Front row left to right: Stephanie Munro, Mackenzie Dressel, Gwendolyn Redmon, Summer Benn, Paige Langlois, Kimberly Lindemann, Stephanie Darkow Back row left to right: Yasmine Albert, Kristin Auchtung, April Weisinger, Sara Tallman, Robin Hanson, Kelly Loeper, Rachel DobberpuhlBusiness Student Awards Left to right: Student Community Impact Coordinator Anne Lemke, Jessica Hendrickson, Instructor Cindy Bernhard, Gabrielle SchmucherBusiness Student Awards left to right: Student Community Impact Coordinator Anne Lemke, Instructor Cindy Bernhard, Jaimi Lee TerLaan, Abigail Donath, Erin Bunch Promise Student Awards left to right: Promise Mentor Bart Putzer, Promise Student Renee Vnuk-Uhrman, Promise Student Brooke Wightman, Promise Mentor Joe Desiderio, Promise Manager Kim Schwamn
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!
Left to right: Instructor Larry Clark, Student Dylan Steffes, Bike Friendly West Bend Jeff Puetz, Associate Dean Marcia Arndt, Bike Friendly West Bend Andrew Schumacher, Student Heather Bins, Instructor Jeff Quackenboss
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.”
Experiential Learning Coordinator Anne Lemke said, “Our MA student Merinda did a great job with the kids! She taught them about healthcare careers at MPTC and shared her own Nursing Assistant and Medical Assistant journey. They had their pulse ox checked and learned what all the breathing oxygen numbers meant and played a fun game of Medical Assistant Word Search. A big thank you to the Moraine Park Medical Assistant students for providing kids with a chance to learn about medical careers and the many jobs in healthcare available all around us!”
On March 28, Fond du Lac and Tri- County Boys and Girls Club teens in grades 5-11 were excited to meet and learn with Moraine Park Criminal Justice students!
Tri-County Boys and Girls Club Teen Futures Coordinator Carrie Govek said, “Our teens were given this great opportunity to participate in an interactive presentation done by the Criminal Justice students and their instructors at Moraine Park. They learned about criminal justice careers and professionalism. They even got to try handcuffs, fingerprinting, and searching for contraband in a jail cell! What a fun learning experience for all those who participated! A big thank you to the Moraine Park Criminal Justice students and their Instructors Joan Barfield and Jeff Gruss for providing our teens with a chance to learn about this important career.”
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