Nicolet College has been awarded a $350,000 grant from Lumina Foundation to build clearer pathways to degrees and other credentials for adults, especially for people of color and Native learners. Lumina’s “All Learning Counts” initiative will support Nicolet to ensure that knowledge, skills, and abilities gained outside of formal higher education—through work, military, and other experiences—can be recognized and applied toward programs leading to credentials of value.

Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College celebrated a new $1.5 million dollar renovation project. It’s part of a multi-year effort to update the campus. Over the summer of 2018 during phase one, the main building got an exterior paint job and preliminary construction began on the front entrance on Catlin Avenue. Throughout the summer, new staffing and student parking lots were put in, as well as a new front entrance to the conference center and back door of the building with a patio.

Mercury Marine has received recognition from Moraine Park Technical College and the Wisconsin Technical College System board and has been selected to receive the 2019 Futuremaker Partner Award. For more than 20 years Mercury Marine has joined forces with Moraine Park to help influence the local economy, provide jobs, and is a supporter of the Moraine Park Foundation.

Chippewa Valley Technical College was recently awarded two grants from the National Science Foundation, which when combined with an April award, total almost $1.7 million. These three grants will support the college’s mission to provide cutting-edge education in manufacturing technology and expand efforts to share information with other academic institutions.

Due to such a high demand for skilled arborists, Milwaukee Area Technical College has created a new program to teach people about the industry. Students who graduate get two different certifications and three college credits. Several tree service companies plan to be at graduation to interview students.

Students in Western Technical College’s Associate of Science-Liberal Arts program can now earn as many as 59 credits that will transfer to UW-La Crosse’s College of Business Administration. Those who complete the pathway will enroll in UW-L with near-junior status in a range of majors: accountancy, economics, information systems, management, marketing and multiple finance disciplines.

Starting in Fall 2019, Northcentral Technical College will be offering a cosmetology program. Through the year-long course, students will learn hair-cutting skills, styling, chemical services, such as perms and relaxing and nail services. Another key aspect of the training is learning how to recognized signs of abuse in potential clients.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers is making ‘re-entry programs for inmates’ a priority over the next two years. In the budget he signed last week, he increased the amount of money for these efforts by almost $1 million.

One of these inmate re-entry programs is being offered at Northwest Wisconsin Technical College. Eleven inmates from Sanger B. Powers Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility, are working toward a certificate in industrial maintenance. The 14-credit program is funded by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

A grant from the U.S. Department of State will boost a growing study abroad program at Chippewa Valley Technical College. CVTC applied for a $35,000 State Department grant to support an Experiencing Postsecondary Learning Overseas through Relevant Education (EXPLORE) program with the goal to expand CVTC's capacity to offer study abroad opportunities.