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Support needed in STEM center final fundraising efforts

By Lauren Waters
Correspondent

BELLEVUE – Community collaboration was the theme of the STEM Innovation Center press conference on Wednesday, July 24, held at the Einstein Project in Bellevue.

“In order for us to get things done, we need to come together as partners and to work together for the common good,” said Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach. “And right here today is a perfect example of how communities are getting things done.”

Streckenbach, University of Wisconsin Green Bay Chancellor Gary Miller and Einstein Project Executive Director Kelly Ellis came together to provide an update on the opening of the STEM Innovation Center and the progress of its fundraising campaign.

“It has been a privilege to work with not only the chancellor and his team, in terms of what it means for the workforce, job readiness and getting the next generation of entrepreneurs out there to help our community grow,” said Streckenbach. “But also then to work with Einstein Project on how we’re getting kids interested, energized and wanting to go into the STEM-related fields.”

The three spoke on the importance of this collective effort to make the new STEM building a success.

Now the team is asking the community for further support to finish the final phase of the process.

“We are $1.8 million from completing our full fundraising efforts,” said Streckenbach. “What we’re hoping for is the community to come forward and see all the great things that we’ve been able to accomplish as a team and to allow us to finish off this fundraising effort for when engineering students enter into school this fall.”

Miller said the engineering interest at UW-Green Bay has more than doubled within the past year, with 30 students in the mechanical engineering program last year to over 70 this year, and that number is growing.

“We really need to make sure that every young person in this region has the chance to understand the importance of science, their ability to participate in it, and their access to it in this area,” he said. “We believe this is a game changer for this part of the state.”

Miller said it’s never too early to start getting kids excited about STEM-related fields, and with the help of Einstein Project, the team hopes this new center will be able to pique more interest of young minds in the community.

“One of the things that makes this partnership so unique is that we have a direct link to one of the finest and most innovative programs to get young people interested in STEM careers and in STEM in general with Einstein Project,” said Miller.

Einstein Project will be moving into the STEM Innovation Center on the UW-Green Bay campus this fall, and Ellis said her team is thrilled for what this will accomplish in terms of reaching more children and getting them excited about STEM-related fields.

“I think that in order to create the best and the most robust pipeline to fill the over 1,800 engineering employee gap just in Brown County alone, we need to scale up the number of students we serve,” said Ellis. “We now have this opportunity to live in a building and develop new STEM kits for children, and we’ll have our peers from the engineering school to help with that.”

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