Mid-State Technical College

7 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 district after graduation. Not only are those great numbers that demonstrate the success of the programs, but it is really important to show that the training happens local and the students stay local.” While those statistics are impressive to read about, they don’t happen without an exceptional team. “We have a great grants team at the college that is very involved in supporting our renewable energy program. We’ve actually had a number of grants through the Midwest Renewable Energy Association to help offset costs,” says Kawski. “We’ve also received a number of private donations and other grant funds to offset costs of our programming to help offer reduced costs or free education to students. We’ve been very fortunate in that market. We also were one of the first five in the state to receive the Workforce Innovation Grant that the state of Wisconsin developed utilizing their federal ARPA dollars.” That grant has provided some of the funding for the College’s AMETA Center for Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, Technology, and Apprenticeship center. “We also have about $4 million of the funds that we received going back into our communities to support various programming,” Kawski adds. “We’re running a free summer welding program for ten high school students so that they can start earlier. They’ll finish the summer with six credits towards our welding program. We have another summer program for high schoolers to earn credits in our precision machining technician program.” Kawski is quick to share the credit for all of these successes. “One of our biggest partners is a major educational equipment supplier out of Milwaukee called LAB Midwest. Matt Kirchner, President of LAB Midwest, and his wife Renee Kirchner, CEO, lead an incredible team that has been phenomenal in helping identify new technologies and new training equipment for many of the programs that our college offers