Nearly one million dollars in grants will help improve education opportunities at Nicolet College.
The college receive the grants from the Wisconsin Technical College System.
The largest grant worth $350,000 will be going to the Health Occupations programs.
It will be used expand the Nicolet College’s family of patient simulators. These are life-like robots that can simulate different medical emergencies the nursing students may encounter once they graduate.
Grants and Projects Resources Manager KatieAnne Ostrenga says it’s about being innovative in how the college can prepare people to enter the workforce.
“They will be able to practice and experience in this simulation lab creating confidence when this situation may arise in the real workforce. It just really helps our students gain the experience and the confidence for ultimately when they enter the workforce,” she said.
Other funds the college received will be going to developing and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion work across campus.
“Diversity, equity, inclusion. You hear it. You see it. It’s real and it’s there. We really are focusing on how do we weave this throughout the whole college and build capacity for a mindset of this as a foundation,” said Ostrenga.
Another large portion of the grant money will go towards student support services. This is things like upgrading career services and career coaching programs.
“We want to be able to build a vision of what their career path or journey may look like with them. With our career service redesign, it’s really building from the ground up and really looking at what student’s needs are, how we can best serve them where they’re at,” said Ostrenga.
All things Ostrenga says go towards building an inclusive culture that students can thrive in.
“We really want students to belong. Creating that culture is where we really want to focus,” she said.
The improvements to the nursing lab will be implemented in the next year and should be fully available to students by July 2023.
Ostrenga hopes students will start to see the differences in the other areas by this fall.
