Business View Magazine | September 2022

47 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 MID-STATE TECHNI CAL COLLEGE middle of the state. We have three other satellite campuses located in Marshfield, Stevens Point, and Adams, Wisconsin,” explains Kawski. “We also occupy the entire third floor at the downtown Wisconsin Rapids Hospital, as we have a healthcare simulation center there.” Change is currently a common theme for Mid- State. “The bulk of my programming is on our Wisconsin Rapids campus,” shares Kawski. “I also have a handful of apprenticeship programs and a stainless steel only welding program on our Marshfield campus. But if you fast forward a year and a half from now, we’ll have our sixth location, which will be a manufacturing and apprenticeship center in Stevens Point. We’ve privately fundraised just over $4.5 million plus state dollars for a new facility. It’s been a grassroots effort and a huge chunk of what I’ve done since I was hired three years ago.” They are adding a 48,000 square foot facility that will be located on property that was donated by a Mid-State Technical College alumni named Wayne Bushman. Bushman graduated from their program 51 years ago and has since gone on to become a major entrepreneur in central Wisconsin, where he owns a number of properties and businesses. “Wayne happened to have some vacant land available,” a grateful Kawski explains. “He is donating 8.7 acres of land in the Stevens Point Industrial Park for us to build a new facility. We have new apprenticeship programs and degree programs that will launch, but a lot of it will be shifting programming from our main Wisconsin Rapids campus over to that new facility. It’s been quite a team effort for the college to pull this all together in times of COVID, but we were very successful in our fundraising effort. We have over 110 capital campaign private donors to this project… there is incredible support and outcry from the community for the need for this project.”