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 student community impact and apply their classroom knowledge to an applicable, real-world environment. 

We encourage students to participate in our community impact awards program where students can track their service-learning or volunteer hours, submit their reflections, and earn a Bronze Award for 25 hours, Silver Award for 50 hours, Gold Award for 100 hours, and President’s Award for 200 hours!

In the 2021 fall semester, despite all the Covid-19 challenges, 15 students earned awards and logged over 1,600 hours of service!  Congratulations to our Fall, 2021 award winners!

Presidents Award

For Fall, 2021, three students earned the President’s Award for over 200 hours of service each in their time at MPTC!  The three students are Corey Koch – Administrative Professional, Heather Quickle – Nursing, and Julianna Stuht – Paramedic.  MPTC President Bonnie Baerwald celebrated with and congratulated each student, stating: “I’m extremely proud of the accomplishments of Julianna, Corey and Heather. Each has their own unique story and came to Moraine Park Technical College to explore and create new career opportunities. In addition to their work and college obligations, their volunteer efforts exemplify the college values of continuous improvement, collaboration, and impactful learning. I can’t wait to see what their futures hold for them!”

President’s Award winner Corey Koch said: “I spent my volunteer internship hours working on the new database/donor tracking system for the FDL Area Women’s Fund.  I was excited to learn and plan how a good database could help bolster the Women’s Fund mission and goals.  I helped with each Women’s Fund fundraising event, and put all previous and new donors into the database.  I also worked on creating a guidebook for the software. I hope this book can be utilized by the next incoming person who will handle software management.  I learned more about working independently and on a team. My Women’s Fund experiences were eye-opening and great practice for my future career.”

President’s Award winner Julianna Stuht said: “Volunteering as an AEMT/firefighter for my community gives me the opportunity to meet the citizens that reside in my service area, as well as further my skills as a healthcare provider. I am so excited to continue learning through this volunteer opportunity.”

Gold Award

Completing 100-199 hours of service-learning or volunteering.

Stuht, Julianna – Paramedic

Silver Award

Completing 50-99 hours of service-learning or volunteering.

Riemersma, Allison – Nursing

Beeks, Tonia – Medical Assistant

Manke, Zoe – Medical Assistant

Stuht, Julianna – Paramedic

Bronze Award

Completing 25-49 hours of service-learning or volunteering.

Beeks, Tonia – Medical Assistant

Moore, Brianna – Medical Assistant

Diaz, Gisselle – Medical Assistant

Manke, Zoe – Medical Assistant

Gerth, Ashley – Medical Assistant

Fassbender, Noelle – Nursing

Koenitzer, Kaitlyn – Medical Assistant

Riemersma, Allison – Nursing

Rogers, Dorothy – Paralegal

Schmitt, Jordyn – Nursing

Stuht, Julianna – Paramedic

Vang-Xiong, Mina – IT Network Specialist

Mueller, Cindy – Leadership Development

Last month, instructors and students from the MPTC Criminal Justice Program hosted 5-12 graders and staff from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Fond du Lac for a fun, interactive Dream Big event.

The Dream Big project started in 2017 with Boys and Girls Clubs of Fond du Lac and Tri-County Area teens learning more about the over 100 careers available through MPTC. This is a great community partnership opportunity for Moraine Park students to showcase their careers and make a true community impact and for area teens to get excited about career choices!

Fond du Lac Boys and Girls Club Teen Services Director Dillon Wiese said, “We love Dream Big opportunities for our teens! At Boys and Girls Clubs we work hard to prepare teens with life skills to get ready for the world of work.  At this Dream Big Criminal Justice event, our students experienced handcuffing, jail cell searches, and what professional skills it takes to work in a criminal justice career. They also learned about the wide variety of careers within the Criminal Justice field. Our partnership with MPTC is a great way for teens to explore their interests, learn about careers, get ready for college and know they really can achieve their dreams! Thank you MPTC!”

Legal Action of WI is coming to Moraine Park’s Fond du Lac Campus! Tuesday, October 26 from 3-6 pm, legal experts will be on-site to help our students. Sign up here for a time to get free, confidential legal help! Walk-ins will also be accepted.

MPTC is partnering with Legal Action of Wisconsin and the statewide Lawyers for Learners project to help our students overcome legal obstacles, and empower them to move forward to achieve educational and career goals!

Whether a student is already involved in a court case or has a question about a situation that could involve a legal problem, Lawyers for Learners can help! Legal experts will meet with students either virtually or in person to explain legal processes, answer questions and provide advice on topics such as driver’s license issues, traffic issues, criminal issues, bankruptcy, immigration, housing, family matters, and more.

“What an awesome community partnership opportunity for MPTC!” Jackie Morgan, MPTC Student Community Equity and Engagement Specialist said. “Many times, legal issues can cause a student to put their education and career on hold. Affording legal help is definitely a challenge for our students. Partnering with Legal Action of WI and the Lawyers for Learners Project connects our students with the legal resources they need.”

MPTC Paralegal and Criminal Justice students are volunteers for our onsite legal event, with ongoing service-learning and paid internships available thru Legal Action of WI.

“What a great experiential learning opportunity for our students choosing careers in the legal or criminal justice fields,” Anne Lemke, Student Community Impact Coordinator said. “Hands-on, real-world experience, plus a way to impact your community is the best way to learn!”

To reach Legal Action of WI, contact Claire at cms@legalaction.org or 920-393-9352.

More information– Lawyers for Learners

On Wednesday, August 25, six MPTC Cosmetology students and their Instructor Eileen Bouchard, travelled to the Washington County West Bend Boys and Girls Club Back to School Event. MPTC Students gave 22 kids a back to school haircut, helping them all feel extra beautiful and confident for heading off to elementary or middle school this fall.

“What a great hands-on service learning experience for our students,” said MPTC Instructor Eileen Bouchard. “This event helped our students connect with parents and kids of many ethnicities, ages and haircut styles; plus learn about the mission of the Boys and Girls Club and the back-to-school needs of over 200 families in our community.”

Max Roy, Director of Operations for Boys and Girls Club of Washington County, said, “It was great to meet you all in person today. I am so glad we got connected on your student Cosmetology volunteers as another community partner Back to School resource for our kids! Thank you so much for all the haircuts today and we look forward to continuing working with MPTC.”

For more information on service learning at MPTC.

Nursing students in Instructor Michele Mengert’s Mental Health and Community Concepts course recently completed their community advocacy projects as part of our Spring, 2021 service learning opportunities. Michele said, “our Nursing students are learning community health oriented nursing. We are targeting prevention strategies. Today’s Nurses need to be able to advocate for under represented populations and know about community resources that are available to help their patients.”

This semester 20 students spent over 100 hours researching and collaborating with community partners in Fond du Lac, West Bend, and Beaver Dam to learn more about parenting, fostering, opioid addiction, human trafficking, poverty, developmental disabilities, domestic violence, sexual assault, and more. Students formulated detailed plans to address how a nurse can 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 in May.

Congratulations on all of this great work on important mental health issues in our MPTC community!

Moraine Park Technical College has presented ASTOP with its 2021 Community Partnership Award. This award recognizes a community partner organization who has gone above and beyond in their role of working with Moraine Park students in student community impact opportunities.

ASTOP is a sexual assault service provider offering treatment, outreach, prevention, and advocacy. ASTOP emphasizes hope and connection to self and others, serving Fond du Lac, Green Lake and Waushara counties. In 2021, despite Covid restrictions, MPTC volunteers served over 300 hours at ASTOP and 3,500 hours overall!

ASTOP Executive Director Nicole Krause said, ““We are so grateful to have been chosen for this award. To say this is an honor is an understatement. Partnerships like this happen when different organizations work together. We cannot thank everyone involved enough! Volunteers are an integral part of our agency and the services ASTOP provides to the communities we help. We really appreciate the time the students have dedicated to our clients.”

Some student words of reflection include:

This is a very fulfilling position knowing you can help empower or even make someone smile when they are hurting inside.

I learned that ASTOP is a very rewarding service provided in Fond du Lac, Green Lake and Waushara counties. ASTOP stands for Assist Survivors Treatment Outreach and Prevention. They have extensive training for staff to support survivors and the affected family members. They try and educate as much as possible through preventative education programs. about sexual abuse rape and or incest. ASTOP offers a crisis line that is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. Another thing that is offered through ASTOP is cost-free counseling. This helps lighten the burden of cost when one is seeking help.

The best thing I learned about what ASTOP offers was about the Art therapy. I know someone that benefited from that a great deal and was just accepted from high school with a full scholarship to an art school. She is doing amazing things and that gives me something to strive to be. Someone to change a human being’s life.

ASTOP also offers Medical Advocacy which helps victims of sexual assault and helps them through the legal system. Having this option to help people deal with whatever situation they have really helps. I am glad they have this as a option to help anyone through their life situation. Just knowing that someone or anyone is there to help is always a great option. I learned so much that I myself could be trained as a medical advocate or volunteer on the crisis line.

As we wrapped up the crisis phone call, the victim gave me the satisfaction of what I wanted to hear, “I can’t thank you enough. You’ve really made me feel empowered.” That is all I wanted to do in this position. I just wanted people to walk away after talking to me and think ‘That was a pleasant phone call’ or ‘That conversation made my day.’ This is a very fulfilling position knowing you can help empower or even make someone smile when they are hurting inside.

Moraine Park Technical College encourages service learning experiences for students. The Marketing and Social Media Management program students attending the Advertising and Social Media Campaigns spring 2021 course were able to gain this experience working with local nonprofit partner organizations. Students attended this course entirely online and were divided into two groups. The 2 groups worked closely together acting as an advertising agency for the entire semester.

The newly created student agency sought out area nonprofit organizations, communicated with them to determine current and future needs, and developed an advertising/social media campaign plan for each organization. The two organizations selected were Kohler Credit Union, Kohler, WI and The Gathering Source, Juneau, WI.

“Students in both groups worked extremely well together all semester. They problem-solved and created ways to communicate and collaborate entirely online using Zoom, OneDrive, Canvas Group Chat, Canva and Google Docs, ” said Sarah Ninmer, Marketing and Social Media Management Instructor.

The students wrote reflections at the end of the semester documenting their experiences. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and students truly appreciated the “real world, hands on” education and connections they made with the nonprofit organizations. Below are a few student quotes:

“I have worked within a team this entire semester for my Advertising and Social Media course at Moraine Park Technical College. We’ve completed several assignments such as a ‘Situational Analysis’ and a ‘Creative Plan’. After completing all of these tasks, we have officially created a comprehensive marketing guide for Kohler Credit Union in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Our team, “Connect Together” worked very hard to analyze, evaluate, design, and so much more for the company. We learned how to communicate effectively, work together, create documents, give professional feedback, etc. We have learned so much!”

Olivia Anderson, Marketing and Social Media Management Program Graduate

“This was essentially exactly what my future job could be, it taught me how hard it is to look at everything from every single angle to try and find the best way to do something. It also made me feel amazing to help this wonderful cause be even better and reach more people. I feel that we worked together amazingly to help The Gathering Source expand and open to new opportunities. I feel this project has helped everyone involved greatly. I learned a ton about helping businesses, how to work with a team and collaborate actively with others for more than just a paper. These are amazing skills to learn in order to work more effectively and positively in the future.”

Emily Poellinger, Marketing and Social Media Management Program Student

“Other than working on creating an advertising plan for a non-profit organization, during this semester I learned how to work in a team and compromise to come together with one campaign plan. It was interesting learning how to work in a group and coordinate a schedule that worked among all my team members. It was great experience to work with a team and learn how compromise all of our team member’s opinions into one joint plan that worked for our client. I think this semester was a great way to learn how to work as a team and gain skills for future career opportunities.”

Peyton Wolter, Marketing and Social Media Management Program Student

“Working on this social media marketing plan for Kohler Credit Union was a great chance to get some really good experience starting a plan from the beginning to end and also knowing what it is like to work on a project like this in a group. Since all of us are online we had to communicate through a group chat on Canvas but we really did not have any problems with that. There were a lot of different aspects of this assignment and even though we were in a group I was able to do a little bit of everything.”

Jake Antonioni, Marketing and Social Media Management Program Graduate

For more info on service learning opportunities at MPTC

Congratulations Fond du Lac Medical Assistant Students! From Left to right, Kayelee Kufalk, Kayla Rieder, Amber Christenson, Hannah Miller, Allexis Wegner, Savannah Clarke, Hailey Rist, Hannah Stoll.

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 student community impact and apply their classroom knowledge to an applicable, real world environment. 

MPTC encourages students to participate in our community impact awards program where students can track their service learning or volunteer 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!

In the 2021 spring semester, despite all the Covid-19 challenges, 53 students earned awards and logged over 2,600 hours of service!

Congratulations to our Spring, 2021 award winners!

Bronze Awards

Completing 25-49 hours of service learning or volunteering.

• Anderson, Keanu – Leadership Development
• Balzer, Morgan – Medical Assistant
• Bartoli, Candice – Nursing
• Bauman, Haley – Medical Assistant
• Berger, Abigail – Medical Assistant
• Christenson, Amber – Medical Assistant
• Collins-George, Halle – Marketing and Social Media
• Dobbert, Michaella – Medical Assistant
• Drabek, Renee – Marketing and Social Media
• Gleixner, Hanna – Medical Assistant
• Goes, Elisa – Nursing
• Goss, Kalie – Medical Assistant
• Haase, Melissa – Medical Assistant
• Hanefeld, Sara – Medical Assistant
• Hansen, Chad – Leadership Development
• Kabat, Mollie – Leadership Development
• Kliamentsyeva, Anastasiya – Marketing and Social Media
• Kollmorgan, Amanda – Leadership Development
• Kowalski, Haley – Medical Assistant
• Kluball, Rachel – Nursing
• Koch, Corey – Administrative Professional
• Kreuziger, Alyssa – Medical Assistant
• Kufalk, Kayelee – Medical Assistant
• McGrath, Megan – Medical Office
• Medeiros Simas, Gabriella – Medical Assistant
• Miller, Hannah – Medical Assistant
• Miller, Penny – Medical Assistant
• Pierret, Sean – Leadership Development
• Poellinger, Emily – Marketing and Social Media
• Quickle, Heather – Nursing
• Reding, Nicole – Nursing
• Reynolds, Douglas – Medical Assistant
• Rieder, Kayla – Medical Assistant
• Riemersma, Allison – Nursing
• Rist, Hailey – Medical Assistant
• Robinson, Kelly – Nursing
• Rosenberg, Kileen – Leadership Development
• Ruplinger, Sarah – Nursing
• Schneider, Stefanie – Medical Assistant
• Schoebel, Victoria – Medical Assistant
• Schultz, Kaytlyn – Nursing
• Serchuk, Marissa – Medical Assistant
• Stewart, Krista – Medical Assistant
• Stoll, Hannah – Medical Assistant
• Taylor, Tiffany – Medical Assistant
• Toombs, Nikki – Leadership Development
• Uttech, Venessa – Medical Assistant
• Vick, Ashley – Medical Assistant
• Wasley, Kelsey – Medical Assistant
• West, Laine – Leadership Development
• Zabolski, Renee – Medical Office

Silver Awards

Completing 50-99 hours of service learning or volunteering.

• Drabek, Renee – Marketing and Social Media
• Gleixner, Hanna – Medical Assistant
• Kabat, Mollie – Leadership Development
• Kluball, Rachel – Nursing
• Koch, Corey – Administrative Professional
• Quickle, Heather – Nursing
• Reynolds, Douglas – Medical Assistant
• Taylor, Tiffany – Medical Assistant
• Toombs, Nikki – Leadership Development
• West, Laine – Leadership Development

Gold Awards

Completing 100-199 hours of service learning or volunteering.

• Koch, Corey – Administrative Professional
• Quickle, Heather – Nursing
• Toombs, Nikki – Leadership Development

President’s Award

completing 200+ hours of service learning or volunteering.

• Henning, Cortland – Culinary Arts

This summer, teens from the Fond du Lac, Tri-County, and Jackson Boys and Girls Clubs will be learning about various careers through the MPTC Dream Big community service project.

The Dream Big project started in 2017 with  area BGC teens visiting MPTC or MPTC students visiting the Clubs each semester to help teens learn more about the over 100 careers available through MPTC. This past year, due to COVID, no visiting was possible. The MPTC Student Community Impact Team, in partnership with faculty leaders, came up with a plan to offer summer career exploration of welding, blueprint reading, cosmetology, and culinary through interactive videos with fun hands on activities.

Dream Big is a great community partnership opportunity to showcase MPTC careers and for area teens to get excited about career choices! Tri-County Boys and Girls Club Director of Operations Mindy Collado said, “We are so excited for these Dream Big opportunities! Thanks for stopping in today and delivering all the goodies. The teens already had a lot of fun and I am sure we will get good use out of the careers materials all throughout this summer! Thank you MPTC!”