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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Contents
THE MAGAZINE FOR GROWING BUSINESSES IN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA
STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS Publisher: Concept & Design Incorporated
COVER STORY
Editor: Grace Webb
Triple Threat
Art Director/Staff Photographer: Kris Kathmann
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Advertising Manager: Beth Benzkofer Kozitza
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson brings knowledge gained in the private, public and nonprofit sectors to the Region Nine Development Commission as the youngest executive director of a regional development commission in the nation.
Contributing Photographers: Art Sidner Contributing Writers: Deb Schubbe Production: Becky Wagner
PROFILES
Circulation: Grace Webb
Metal Maverick
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Ken Wilmes took a big risk when he started his own company more than 30 years ago—but it paid off as Industrial Fabrication Services exploded into a multi-million dollar business.
Colors Of The World
Printing: Corporate Graphics, N. Mankato Mailing: Midwest Mailing, Mankato
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Cover Photo: Kris Kathmann
CIRCULATION 8,800 for September/October 2015 Published bimonthly
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CORRESPONDENCE
Artist and business owner Bob Vogel travels the world to find inspiration for his unique artwork.
Send press releases and other correspondence: c/o Editor, Connect Business Magazine P.O. Box 452, Nicollet, MN 56074
WORKFORCE SPECIAL SERIES
Part II – Training The Next Generation
E-mail: editor@connectbiz.com (please place press releases in email body) Web: www.connectbiz.com
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While more high school graduates are going to college than ever before, employees are still facing a workforce shortage as students gravitate towards liberal arts educations. Across southern Minnesota, schools and organizations are working to show kids the wide range of options available to them.
Phone: 507.232.3463 Fax: 507.232.3373
ADVERTISING
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Call: (507) 232-3463
ABOUT CONNECT Locally owned Connect Business Magazine has ‘connected’ southern Minnesota businesses since 1994 through features, interviews, news and advertising.
COLUMNS
Editor’s Letter Grace Notes
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Connect Business Magazine is a publication of Concept & Design Incorporated, a graphic design firm offering print design, web design, illustration and photography. conceptanddesign.com
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IN EVERY ISSUE
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Business Trends
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Bulletin Board
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Hot Startz!
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Press Releases
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CONNECT Business Magazine
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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Copyright 2015. Printed in U.S.A.
Today’s LED lighting. Uses less energy, resulting in lower costs. Extended lifetime reduces maintenance cost. Dimming and control capability. Color closely resembles daylight, making colors crisp. Generates less heat, reducing cooling costs. Why upgrade now? LEDs produce an even, bright light, which can improve the comfort and productivity of employees.
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EDITOR’S LETTER
Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone You won’t get far if you never step out of your comfort zone. Business owners know this. They know the importance of weighing risks with possibilities, of balancing security and innovation. No matter the situation, rarely will a business evolve without first stepping out of that comfort zone. Our September issue of Connect Business Magazine features three business owners that stepped out of their comfort zones to find success. First, there’s our cover story, featuring Nicole Griensewic Mickelson, the executive director of Region Nine Development Commission. As the youngest executive director of a regional development commission, as well as a woman in a field of men, Griensewic Mickelson knows all about stepping out of her comfort zone. In fact, she has leapt from one zone to another, changing sectors from private to nonprofit to public with impressive bravery. Our second feature stars Ken Wilmes, co-owner and general manager of Industrial Fabrication Services in Lake Crystal. More than 30 years ago, Wilmes chose starting his own business over going back to school. The risky move paid off as he now runs a multi-million dollar business that sends projects around the world. Finally, there’s Bob Vogel, a colorblind artist from St. Peter who opened Stained Glass Studio in 2000. Vogel travels the world to find inspiration for his artwork, and some of the places—such as the mountains of South America and the glaciers of Antarctica—are definitely off the beaten path. It all goes to show the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone. We hope you enjoy this issue’s selections. An veritas, an nihil,
Grace Webb
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Call for Nominations
JUDGED BY:
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Business Person of the Year Award Nominate a colleague and see them featured on the cover of Connect Business Magazine’s January 2016 issue. All nominations are confidential. PREVIOUS WINNERS
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2007: Roxie Mell-Brandts
2008: Jeff Thom
2009: John Finke
2010: Pamela J. Year
2011: John Roise
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Nominate at connectbiz.com/bpoy IT’S EASY TO NOMINATE! Go to connectbiz.com/bpoy and fill out the entry form by noon, October 3. Three important rules: You can’t nominate yourself; the nominated person must work and live in either Blue Earth, Le Sueur, Martin, Brown, Watonwan, Waseca, Faribault, Sibley or Nicollet County; and the nominated person must not have appeared in a major Connect Business Magazine feature from 2013-15.
NOMINATIONS OPEN SEPT 1 through OCT 3 IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
How the winner is chosen: Connect Business Magazine will learn more about the nominees, and forward the information on to our judges, who are Minnesota State University business professors. Each judge will have up to three votes: five points will be awarded for their first choice, three for second, and one for third. The top votegetter will appear on our January 2016 cover, and the two runners-up will appear inside the magazine. Judges will take into consideration the person’s character, leadership abilities, community involvement, and business results. Business persons from any business — large or small, profit or nonprofit, large town or small — are eligible.
NOMINATE A COLLEAGUE TO APPEAR ON THE JANUARY 2016 COVER!
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2015: Steve VanRoekel
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Submit a Nomination!
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By Grace Webb Photo by Kris Kathmann
Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland. These were some of some of the elusive “triple threats” of the Hollywood Golden Age, leaving a legacy thanks to their equally impressive acting, dancing and singing skills. While you won’t see her on the big screen, Nicole Griensewic Mickelson is another “triple threat.” For her, it’s the experience she brings to the table from her time in the private, the nonprofit and the public sectors. Her private sector experience comes from years as a store leader for Target Corporation. There, as Target’s youngest store manager, she managed a team of more than 100 employees and oversaw a store that made $20 million in annual sales. Her nonprofit sector experience comes from her time as resource development manager for Habitat for Humanity of South Central Minnesota. This position allowed her to grow roots in the southern Minnesota community and form
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson combines knowledge gained in the private, public and nonprofit sectors as the youngest executive director of a regional development commission in the nation.
relationships with countless area partners— relationships she still nurtures today. Finally, her public sector experience comes from her time at Region Nine Development Commission, where she has been the executive director since 2012. She’s the youngest executive director of a regional development commission, but that isn’t slowing her down. Rather, she brings fresh ideas, unquenchable zeal and eternal optimism to her position, tirelessly looking for new partnerships to form and new ways to help her community. One of her biggest goals is sharing Region Nine’s story so that people know the many resources that are offered through the organization. Like Hollywood’s triple threats before her, Griensewic Mickelson is building her own legacy. Instead of box office records or Academy Awards, her legacy is one of community support and economic development throughout southern Minnesota. And that’s a pretty good legacy to leave. continued > SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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Triple Threat
Tell me a little about yourself. I was born and raised in Mankato. I was very much a city girl but I do feel like I had a lot of experiences in the country; my uncle had a farm, which is where I learned to love horses, and my mom grew up on a farm. I feel like I can relate to the rural areas in some regards, rather than just being a straight city kid from Mankato. Your parents were both teachers. How did that affect you growing up? My dad taught in the Maple River school district, and my mom taught in the Mankato school district. They had full time jobs, and at times also part time jobs, and they were both active in their unions and various committees. At home, I’d be doing homework at the table, and they would be up checking papers and doing their paperwork and proofreading. The kitchen table was always full of a variety of our work. Since my parents were teachers, I was always “Mr. G’s daughter” or “Ms. Griensewic’s daughter.” They knew everybody in town, it seemed, which helped me learn how everybody in the greater community is connected. Did they have high standards for you, then? Oh, absolutely… It was expected that I would do well, and I’d behave well. They did not want me to be the child that was misbehaving. I was expected to work really, really hard and get good grades. And so I did.
Triple Threat
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The Highway 169 Project Region Nine has its own Transportation Advisory Committee and acts as a liaison between the region and the MN Department of Transportation. This relationship helped Griensewic Mickelson and her staff secure a federal grant of $9.8 million to complete a project along Highway 169. Griensewic Mickelson said that this grant is likely the largest grant ever received by a state transportation department from the federal Economic Development Administration. According to Griensewic Mickelson, the federal EDA was offering “disaster dollars” for areas facing economic development disasters. RNDC was able to demonstrate
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson | Region Nine Development Commission
My parents were my biggest role models. They have a very good work ethic, and they always had numerous jobs. I saw them always working, and I thought, “I want to get a job too, and do something that’s interesting.”
matter what you look at, or what topic or industry you work in, there’s a history to it.
So what was your first job? My first job was at Don’s Hobby, a hobby store that was located where Blue Bricks is now. I started there when I was 15. It was a really cool experience because I got to learn the retail side of things and sell really fun products for creative people. I worked there all through high school. At the same time, I got another job at 1 Potato 2, which was at the food court in the River Hills Mall. I made time to play flute in my high school band, participate in the National Honor Society, work as a yearbook editor and actively participate with the Student Council.
I understand you studied abroad in Germany. Tell me about that. It was during the spring of my sophomore year. We studied in what had been East Germany, so that was really interesting. In the U.S., we know a lot about Bavaria, but to be in the eastern side, there’s a whole different story. We have our own perceptions about how it must have been challenging when the country was divided, and, while there were a lot of obviously difficult situations, it was interesting to hear my host family’s perspective on what they did like about it and why. My best friends from college are the ones who studied abroad with me. We traveled on weekends together, to cities like Dresden, Amsterdam and Berlin. We went to Greece for our spring break. In Europe, taking a train to Prague is like us driving to Wisconsin.
You attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to study history and German. Why history? I’ve always been interested in history. Growing up, a lot of our family vacations were wherever the National Educators’ Association (NEA) conference was. My family would go to all these different cities, and we would hit a lot of museums. It’s always really fascinated me to understand where we live, who was there first, what did that look like and how has that kind of shaped where we are now. No
Was that your first trip abroad? That was probably my third time, actually. Even when I was younger, I knew I wanted to travel. And my mom knew that was important to me. She took a part time job to help send me over to Europe the first time when I was a sophomore in high school. We went for two weeks in the summer, as part of a school group, and we visited 10 different countries with a night or two in each. Then, during my junior year, my German class visited Germany and Austria.
how southern Minnesota faces a true economic development disaster whenever Highway 169 floods, since most products are still moved by truck. Because of this, RNDC and MnDOT were able to help secure the $9.8 million grant. “Most federal EDA grants are probably $1-1.3 million, so we know very well that they could have picked nine other projects and skipped ours,” she said. “But they understood that this truly is so, so important to not just our region but also southern Minnesota and northern Iowa.” The project, which will start in 2016, runs from Mankato to St. Peter and includes three main elements: nine miles of the four-lane highway will be resurfaced from north of Highway 14 to St. Peter’s south side; a center barrier will be added for the whole section to prevent head-on collisions; and four lowlying sections of the highway (Hiniker Creek, Old River Bluff Road, 7-mile Creek and Minnesota State Hospital at St. Peter) will be raised several feet so that the highway can stay open despite rising water levels
during floods. The project is estimated to cost about $25-30 million overall and will take about six months to complete, resulting in detours throughout next year’s construction season. So far, MnDOT is planning on rerouting traffic west on Highway 99 to County Road 13 to Highway 14. “I think everyone was so excited, and they were patting us on the back when the funding was announced,” Griensewic Mickelson said. “I just hope they remember how important it is going to be and the impact it will have for the region when the road is all ripped up.” While she acknowledges that the construction will impact commuters and businesses along the corridor, Griensewic Mickelson said that MnDOT has been doing a good job about preparing for the project and sharing the information with the public. “I can’t speak highly enough about them,” she said. “I have full faith in them running this.” From here on out, Region Nine will not be involved in the project, and is leaving it in MnDOT’s hands. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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Triple Threat
How did all this traveling change your perspective on life? I think traveling makes you really realize that you are a global citizen. You think a lot differently, whether it’s politics or society or acceptance of different cultures. If you just live in one place your whole life, I think your perspective can be so different. It’s important to be challenged and think, “Well, why is it like this? Why do we do it this way?” It makes you think about things a little differently.
Triple Threat
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The Region Nine Development Commission was organized in 1972 and is governed by 37 regional leaders. These elected officials represent nine counties, 72 cities, 147 townships, school districts, the Minnesota Valley Council of Governments, and the special interest groups Health & Human Services and Minority Populations. The nine counties included within the region are Blue Earth, Brown, Faribault, Le Sueur, Martin, Nicollet, Sibley, Waseca and Watonwan. As Griensewic Mickelson explains, Region Nine is an entity that works with everything from counties to townships to groups within cities. It is neither a state nor a federal entity but rather a regional one. Often, the work is done by contract, such as a current project focusing on creating a comprehensive plan for the city of Henderson. For smaller projects, such as when a city calls looking for census information, Region Nine can assist at no charge. Some of the work is connecting communities with other organizations that can help them, such as DEED. Besides working with area businesses, Region Nine also assists with community development (such as grant writing for housing development), GIS mapping and data management, county hazard mitigation, Homeland Security and Emergency Management planning services, and hosting social media breakfasts to teach people how to more effectively use social media. “Region Nine is a catch-all for whatever issues, questions and projects people have,” Griensewic Mickelson said. “We’re the partner for progress.”
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson | Region Nine Development Commission
All of those experiences have still definitely shaped me and challenged my thinking, even now. I have been to 15 countries now, and they’re all completely different and you love them all for different reasons. Did you work in college? Oh yeah, I worked a ton in college. I was one of those friends who was always working, who’d say, “I’ll meet up with you guys when I’m done.” I was a server almost all through college, and then a bartender. After my freshman year of college, I moved out to Colorado and worked on a dude ranch called The Home Ranch as a server. When I went back to Eau Claire, I worked at another resort, but my primary job was at Fanny Hill, which was a Victorian inn and dinner theater. I started as a server, then I got trained in as a bartender, and then I ended up taking manager on duty calls. I kind of worked my way up and did a little bit of everything, whatever I could to get hours and more shifts. Then I got another job as a bartender at a downtown bar, Clancy’s. So I would work shifts at Fanny Hill, and then I’d go bartend the closing shift at Clancy’s. With all those jobs, how did you have time for anything else? (Laughs) I was involved in several different activities on campus, like the History Honors Society, social events and fundraisers. My history professors had a way of signing me up for things without my knowledge, like when a professor went in and changed my schedule so I could be a mentor for incoming freshmen history students. And I also was a teaching assistant for another history class. But I enjoyed it; I liked to help out other students. History seems very important to you. Are you still involved in it somehow? Last year, I did the last leg of the Reconciliation Ride for the Dakota 38+2 (a reference to the 38 Dakota executed on Dec. 26 and two others executed shortly after) on Dec. 26. I helped do some planning for the ride, and I met the other riders out at Land of Memories, where the mass hangings occurred in 1862. Being from Mankato, I feel like the story isn’t told and understood enough. We cannot comprehend the magnitude and how it shaped the whole state and, really, the whole nation.
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You graduated from the university in 2005. What came next? One of the managers at my restaurant encouraged me to apply for Target Corporation, and they ended up recruiting me right out of college and sending me to their Rochester store. I stayed there for about four and a half years working at both the Rochester and Austin stores, as well as helping open another Target on the south side of Rochester. You eventually started managing a store that made $20 million in annual sales. What was it like going from managing a team of restaurant employees to supervising more than 100 Target employees? It was a huge difference. There was a lot of structure that I wasn’t used to, with pay grades and levels and things like that. But there
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Triple Threat
was also this camaraderie. We were all in it together. At the end of the day, in my eyes, retail and being a server aren’t all that different, because you are trying to make people happy, give them what they’re looking for, have the transaction go well and have them come back. It works well for my personality, because I’m very social and an extrovert for sure. I really enjoyed the opportunity to engage with so many different types of people and be surrounded by so many unique personalities. I get a lot of energy and excitement from that. On your best days, people would be there cheering you on, patting you on the back, and then on the worst days, people were right there going, “I know that was tough. Should we go get a beer?” You were Target’s youngest store leader. What was that like? What was really cool about Target was how being a young female for them was the norm. It wasn’t a label or something you had to talk about. They were very supportive and understood that women are fabulous leaders. They did a really nice job of working with many of us. I was able to get promoted relatively quickly because I was willing to work hard. To lead a big group, it was a lot of responsibility and a lot of stress, but I could tell myself, “Some group of people made the decision that you were the right person to do this.” On the tough days, it was nice to realize someone had faith in me. Tell me how you go about being an effective leader with such a large team. I think it is important to know the strengths of your team and have that trust relationship with your managers. You need to know how often you need to follow up with one team or one individual, and what type of communication works for them. I think a lot of the time, people just don’t know how to communicate and when. Also, if you have good plans in place, then life won’t be so chaotic. But it takes a lot of work and being very thoughtful to slow down to make those plans. It sounds like you enjoyed working at Target. What
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson
made you decide to leave? Really, it was a lot of different situations kind of happening at once. In retail, if you’re going to continue to get promoted, you typically have to keep moving. There comes a point where you don’t want to keep moving your life. My husband Alex and I took a step back and evaluated the situation, and figured out that Mankato was the place we needed to be—back home and near our families. Once we moved here in 2010, everything kind of calmed down and fell into place. What did you do once you moved back to Mankato? I worked for Habitat for Humanity of South Central Minnesota as their resource development manager. It was a newly created position, so it was an interesting opportunity to go to out and meet businesses and explain the mission and how to support it. It was completely different from Target; I went from leading a humongous team to being in a really small office with only four other women.
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You’ve worked in the nonprofit sector, the public sector and now the government sector. Tell me about the differences you’ve discovered among the three. I think I’ll surprise a lot of people by saying I don’t think it’s as different as what people would expect. There are a lot of differences with how you’re governed, and how you operate and communicate, but it all comes down to making an impact, having a good product and having returning customers. At the same time, you have to watch your budget, communicate effectively, lead efficiently and trust your people. I think people get labeled that they’re going to be in business and that they’re in the private sector for good. Instead, I’d encourage people to switch their career paths and jump around a bit to different sectors, because you’re going to learn something and bring a different skill set to the table no matter where you go. All three sectors have a lot to learn from each other. And I’ve definitely learned from each of them. At the end of the day, if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, and you respect and value the people SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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“Instead, I’d encourage people to switch their career paths and jump around a bit to different sectors, because you’re going to learn something and bring a different skill set to the table no matter where you go.” you’re working with, you’re going to have a good product and make good goals to impact others. What are some of the other differences among sectors? When decisions are made in the private sector, change can happen quickly. From my experience, this process moved at times too fast for some individuals to be comfortable with. The implications of these decisions primarily are communicated after the decision has been implemented. Conversely, when decisions are made in the
public sector, the decision will go through a public process and be reviewed before being implemented. Once the decision has been implemented, the stakeholders and citizens have been educated and prepared for the change. This process does not happen quickly and can move too slowly for individuals to be comfortable with. Regardless of which sector, change can be difficult. Yet, it is necessary. Whether employed by the private, nonprofit or public sector, people are working hard and contributing to their communities. In the end, it does not matter how fast
change takes effect; what matters is the affect the change has. Those who work in the public sector are encouraged to reach across organizational boundaries. We want a variety of stakeholder input into our public process. While some private and nonprofit entities may reach across organizational boundaries for input, it is not a necessary requirement. In the public sector, it is imperative to act as the connector as part of our due diligence and commitment to the communities we serve. The private sector is the innovative driver in our economy, while the non-profits can
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Nicole Griensewic Mickelson | Region Nine Development Commission
be a creative driver in our local communities without being beholden to shareholders. The public sector has the ability to act as a connector and bring together the innovation and creativity to ensure strong future growth for our regional economies. I’ve often heard experts talking about how nonprofits and the government sector could learn from the private sector. What do you think? The two sectors have a lot to learn from each other. At Region Nine, I have to make sure I’m doing a good job to make my bosses happy. It’s the same in the corporate world and the nonprofit world. You want to add money to your reserves or your bottom line. In the for-profit world, you think, “How can we make the most money?” Here, we’re trying to think, “How can we have the best impact?” We’re not pie in the sky, just talking about things. We’re really doing things here, and that’s what I really like. No matter what county in our
region, we can point to something and say, “We helped them do this.” And that’s what’s really cool. In government, the way that it’s structured allows us to get public, private and nonprofit input. We are working with leaders from area nonprofits, workforce centers, state and federal agencies, and local businesses. We work with all of these different groups to get their opinions to hear, “This is what needs to be done to have our economy grow.” We are looking at things really comprehensively. I think the private sector could learn from that, and encourage people to think outside of their little silos. I think that engagement and involvement of knowing what’s going on outside of your organization and your business field is important. What are some of the challenges that come with the public sector? One of the hardest things for me when I started at Region Nine was that I had to wait
for certain timelines. I wanted things to go faster in this world. And I think we have sped things up with our internal processes. But then again, in a democratic society, it’s going to have to go slower because you want to get public input. You want people to review, and have time to read it, and have time to reflect and to give their opinion, and then get it back and make changes and edits. It is a wonderful part of the democratic public process. What led you to Region Nine? I was in a leadership institute (the Elizabeth Kearney Women’s Leadership Institute) at the time, and my peers in the program really pushed me to apply. So I did what any smart person would do: I went home quick and studied every single link possible on the website to understand regional government, looked at all the minutes from former meetings, agendas, everything. It just seemed like a really cool opportunity to be able to make an impact
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on the greater region where I grew up. You could say it was a bit like my Goldilocks situation: after being in the corporate world, which was so big, and then a nonprofit, which was much smaller, Region Nine seemed like a perfect fit for me. In the past I was fortunate enough to work with great people in many different settings and on many wonderful programs. Region Nine seemed like a great opportunity to lead a staff that was doing interesting and unique work. No one else is doing this in the area.
As the 2015-16 school year kicks off, Junior Achievement also ramps up to make a difference in nearly 8,000 Greater Mankato students’ lives by offering curriculum for grades K-12 that teaches the principles of market-based economics and entrepreneurship. JA is able to make a significant impact and increase programs year-overyear due to the commitment of its generous sponsors. Because of their financial support to JA’s mission, this community’s youth are given the tools needed to succeed in a global economy. For a full list of JA sponsors for 2015-16, visit www.jaum.org/mankato
I heard you’re the youngest executive director of a regional development commission in the U.S. Our national organization is pretty darn certain that that’s true.
Triple Threat
Nicole Basics Education: Mankato West (2001), double major in History and German from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (2005) Family: Husband Alex, coonhound Finnegan, cats Banjo and Gypsy, and horse Sienna Hobbies: Horseback riding, attending music concerts, traveling, kayaking and canoeing Favorite school subject: Social Studies Least favorite school subject: Math. “I like really creative, out-of-the-box type thinking, but math is pretty black and white.” Favorite country visited: “The quick answer is Greece, because the people were so hospitable and welcoming.” Countries on the bucket list: Cuba and Croatia If she wasn’t doing this: “I would quit this job tomorrow if Saturday Night Live called me up and wanted me to do sketch comedy. I think it would be so much fun to rub elbows with famous people, make people laugh all day, and hear some really great bands.” Fun fact: Griensewic Mickelson has visited 46 states. She still needs Alaska, Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. She’s working on it.
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Nicole Griensewic Mickelson | Region Nine Development Commission
Was that intimidating? Honestly, right from the beginning, no. Going back to my retail management experience, I was used to being promoted as long as I met their standards, regardless of my age or gender. It didn’t seem odd to me until people kept saying that to me and asking that question, “Isn’t it weird to be so young?” After people kept asking, I felt like, “Well, shoot, should I feel weird?” I feel, and of course I have a bias, that it is kind of cool that I have a different perspective and that I came from outside the organization. Region Nine was doing really great things well before I got here, and they are going to be doing really great things long after I have left. I think it is always good to have a new leader with fresh ideas. I wasn’t coming from a different development organization going, “Well, the way we do it there…” There’s nothing worse than hearing that. You need to focus on, “Where are we today, where will we be tomorrow, and how do we stay relevant and relatable?”
“It didn’t seem odd to me until people kept saying that to me and asking that question, “Isn’t it weird to be so young?” After people kept asking, I felt like, “Well, shoot, should I feel weird?””
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You’re also a young woman in a field run predominantly by men. Has that been a challenge? Being a woman in this field shouldn’t be something that we should have to stop and talk about. In Minnesota, we seem to have it right in that half of our executive directors are female. I have some really great peers, and they’re doing fabulous things, so I’m stealing ideas from them left and right. But nationwide, it definitely is a very maledominated field. I’ve heard our organization will see a third of its executive directors retire within the next few years, so now we will have this new wave of directors. Like every other industry, we’re going to see things shift and look a little different, so the question is, “How do we adapt and accept new leaders?” You want to make it easier for the next person coming in. You attended the Elizabeth Kearney Women’s Leadership Institute in 2011. What did you take away from that? It was fabulous. The institute is really about helping encourage other women to support each other. We are raised where we are quick to be critical of each other instead of raising each other up. Helping back other women with their leadership, whether they are working at home, have a job or are a professional or executive, is so important. This type of women’s leadership institute is not done all over the state or in other states. Our region is lucky to have this structured opportunity to learn from other women and hear what their struggles are so we can better empower these regional leaders. Another thing I really appreciated was that it gave me a little more SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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FEEL CONFIDENT YOU’LL MEET YOUR GOALS NO MATTER WHERE YOUR JOURNEY TAKES YOU
Ben Ellingson Partner-in-Charge, Mankato Office
of a permission slip to be an authentic leader. When I got this job, the title was executive director of a regional governmental agency. That sounds so stuffy. It was kind of that panic attack of, “Oh my gosh, do people expect me to dress like a female politician? Do I have to wear a pantsuit every day?” Well, no one’s telling me to do that. What do I want to do?
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Describe to me in layman’s terms what you do as executive director. The quick answer is that I oversee all operations and administration. I’m in charge of hiring, performance management, bringing on new programs, the overall budget, the governance of working with the board and the full commission. As the chief executive, I am held accountable to our commission and am the face of the organization. When I started three years ago, really great work was getting done, but no one seemed to know about it. One of my very first goals was getting rid of the “head tilt.” When I go out and I say that I work for the Region Nine Development Commission, I don’t want people to go, “Huh? What’s that?” and tilt their heads in confusion. I think we have done such a nice job of doing that. There is still work to do, of course, to get to where I envision us getting to but for the size of our organization, I think we’re doing a really nice job. It’s my job to tell the story of what staff is working on; it’s my job to go out and drum up more business and figure out whom to work with based on their community’s needs. I’m the eyes and ears of what’s going on in the region for the organization. It’s great, because I have interests a mile wide and an inch deep, so I get to play in all these different sandboxes. I get to go and do advocacy work for the region at the state and federal level. I’ll do the Day at the Capitol through Greater MN Partnership or other partner organizations. Once a year I go out to Washington D.C. to meet with the offices of U.S. senators and our members of congress about what is going on in south central Minnesota and how they can better assist in meeting the region’s needs. I also attend meetings of the Association of Minnesota Counties, the League of Minnesota
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson
Member FDIC
Cities and the Minnesota Association of Townships. What issues are facing southern Minnesota right now? There are many wonderful things happening across our region, but there are also many challenges. We are so diverse as a region that the challenges are vast. Four big challenges we see consistently regionwide are: aging population, transportation investment, developing a workforce with the skills that employers need, and workforce housing. In five years, I hope we are not still talking about the need for welders and personal care attendants. The challenge is: how do you tell the story of what the region needs for jobs, where the jobs are and how they can offer some really great wages and benefits? If we’re not helping our partner agencies in workforce development tell that story and talking about it constantly, how would anyone even know those job vacancies exist? For example, our partners have told us that our region is going to continue to be successful if we can recruit, train and retain truck drivers, nurses, welders and other skilled workers to fill some of the top in-demand occupations in south central Minnesota. It’s part of our job to help them tell that story. Not every student should be pushed into a 4-year college. However, looking into the numbers, we know that most jobs are going to require some type of postsecondary degree or specialized training. It’s our job as a region to do a little bit of matchmaking—not pushing, but laying it out there. How do we work with the school counselors, workforce centers and business leaders to tell that story? For the past few years, there have been reports that businesses are leaving Minnesota. Have you seen that in communities where Region Nine works? While it ebbs and flows and differs across the landscape of our region, would you believe that the region has actually added 58 employers since the end of the most recent recession? That represents a 1 percent increase, but it is a step in the right direction. We are not losing employers.
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“We have some really cool stories about businesses that started or expanded from our loans. For instance, Angie’s Kettle Corn actually started through one of our revolving loan funds.” Every community is so different. There are trends for rural Minnesota where the population is graying and there’s also a perceived “brain drain,” where kids are going off to college and not coming back to some of our most rural communities. The story that people want to be quick to tell is, “Small towns are dying.” That’s not always the case. The work has to be done to tell the story in a more meaningful and direct way, like sharing what jobs they have available and what benefits they’re offering, both direct benefits through the job but also the benefits of living in a smaller community. There are many advantages to living in a small city: larger spaces, a hometown feel, and in some cases more property at lower prices, as well as access to high wage employment—specifically in manufacturing—without the long commute. And regardless of where you live, there are always opportunities for smart, hard-working entrepreneurs. It’s about
telling that story and doing that marketing work instead of just throwing your hands up in defeat and going, “We’ve lost our hardware store. Now the town’s just going to collapse.” What are some programs Region Nine offers to businesses? We have a program called Community Analyst Online. If a business owner wants to decide where to locate, we can work with them by putting in all these different data sets, like where their customers live and what income bracket they’re in, and whittle it down to tell them, “Based on all this information, you should locate here.” For example, one business came to us, and I assumed they should have been located up by the bigger box stores, but by pulling all the information, we realized they should locate downtown. So that’s where they went, and they’re doing really well. Then there is our gap financing. We have
revolving loan funds to help businesses when traditional lending options cannot cover the full requested amount. We have some really cool stories about businesses that started or expanded from our loans. For instance, Angie’s Kettle Corn actually started through one of our revolving loan funds. A lot of it goes back to the technical assistance, and pulling a lot of different data, and being that matchmaker. We can help connect them with different partners, like Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF), the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) and the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). One example is how we worked with a group of community leaders in Trimont who wanted to raise funds to build a town center where they could buy the diesel fuel they needed for their farm equipment. In the past, they had to drive 20 miles in any direction from town in
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
Nicole Griensewic Mickelson
THE ESSENTIALS
Regional Nine Development Commission Phone: 507-387-5643 Address: 10 Civic Center Plaza, Suite 3 Mankato, Minnesota Website: www.rndc.org
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order to buy that. They came together and got the idea of founding this town center, which would include a grocery store, gas station and a hardware store. Our 501c3 arm, Region Nine Area Inc., was their fiscal sponsor as they collected more than $800,000 in donations over the past few years. They are now breaking ground and plan to open by the end of October. What are some of the challenges your commission is facing right now? I don’t think there’s any challenge that is too big to work through. I feel supported because I have great commissioners, and I know that my staff members feel supported and are passionate about their work in the region. I’m not saying it is easy, but I believe in being optimistic and positive. We have had a lot of curveballs thrown our way and we’re still going strong. There are always uncertainties. Regarding the political climate...you never know when things could turn. Right now, we have great state and federal partners. We work closely with both congressmen’s offices, and Senator Franken and Senator Klobauchar’s staff. Everyone is really supportive of the work that we are doing. It is my belief that they always will be, as long as we tell the story. I think the only time that we would ever lose people’s support is as soon as we slow down and do not explain who we are helping and why. If communities ever feel like we are not an approachable, reliable and relevant organization that can help them, then I think community leaders’ attitudes and opinions could shift. But that would be shame on us, for not telling our own story. Lucky for me, we have a great story and I love telling it! Comment on this story at connectbiz.com
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5 YEARS AGO
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 Curt Fisher of Mankato’s Coldwell Banker Commercial Fisher Group was the main feature in this issue. Profiled companies included Norsoft in Mankato and Ideation Consulting in New Ulm. Great quote from Fisher on the importance of taking risks as an entrepreneur: “I’ve been a risk taker and thoughtfully taken risks. The types of risk I take now are different than when I was young. Back then, the challenge of completing most any risk in my profession was exciting… but now, it’s more about accomplishing something bigger [that has] a broad impact on the community.” 10 YEARS AGO
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005 507-345-5554 • Mankato, MN www.NorthernEnergyHomes.com
Our cover story was Glen Taylor, owner of the North Mankato-based Taylor Corporation. Profiled companies were Walter’s Publishing in Waseca and the Golden Heart Childcare Center in North Mankato. One good quote from Taylor: “I think it’s part of leadership to go above and beyond. I would like to see more companies and their leaders do that. Sometimes, I feel embarrassed when I see U.S. companies not giving back to their community.” 15 YEARS AGO
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2000 Our cover story featured David Castle, president of Weigh-Tronix in Fairmont. A secondary story featured Ed Fahrforth, owner of Mankato’s Kato Sanitation. Profiled companies were Johnson Components in Waseca and Agri-Comm Alarms and Pulse Security, Inc. in Mankato. 20 YEARS AGO
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1995 This issue didn’t feature a cover person— that didn’t begin until 1996—but focused on how businesses could protect their intellectual property. In addition, two area companies were profiled: Hewitt Machine & Manufacturing of Nicollet and Bolton & Menk of Mankato. 26
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Read the entire articles at connectbiz.com
BUSINESS TRENDS
LABOR
Youth labor force participation rates have steadily declined over the past 15 years, according to Business Insider, reaching a low of 34 percent of youth (ages 16-19) in July. Among Americans aged 2024, the participation rate has fallen from 77.5 percent in 1998 to 71 percent in 2014. The highest combined participation rate for these two groups recorded since 1955, when data was first collected, was 68.8 percent in September 1979, reports The Regional Economist. The participation rate stayed above 65 percent until 2000, and it has been falling ever since.
Business Insider experts suspect part of the decrease stems from the fact that youth are staying in school longer, a theory that is backed up by rising graduation rates. The Institute of Education Sciences reports that the average freshman graduation rate was 81 percent for the 2011-2012 academic year, compared to a 74 percent rate 20 years ago. More full-time high school students means fewer young people able to take on full-time or even part-time jobs. In the same way, 65.9 percent of high school seniors go on to post-secondary education, according to the New York Times. College students often focus all their attention of their studies; only 37.9 percent of college students had jobs or were looking for jobs in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among those young people who are working or looking for jobs, labor force participants face an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent—nearly double the overall national unemployment rate, according to the International Labor Organization.
Then there are what policymakers call the “disconnected youth,” young people between 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor employed. Over the past few years, the percentage of “disconnected youth” has stayed about the same at 14 percent—around 5.6 million in total, according to The Washington Post. Last year, disconnected youth cost taxpayers about $93.7 billion in government support and lost tax revenue, according to Measure of America, with African American youth facing the highest rate (22.5 percent) of youth disconnection. In Minnesota, grants from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) will soon provide $3.18 million to fund programs that focus on youth who are economically disadvantaged, at-risk, homeless, disabled and minorities. Minnesota Business reports that the goal is to use the funds to provide disadvantaged youth with workplace skills, which will hopefully enable them to find jobs.
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BUSINESS TRENDS
HOUSING
Americans bought homes in June at the fastest rate in more than eight years, according to the Associated Press. The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes increased 3.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.49 million, reaching the highest point since February 2007. Home sales have increased 9.6 percent over the past 12 months, with all four regions seeing an increase in sales, while the number of home listings has only risen 0.4 percent. A year ago, there was a 5.5 month supply of homes available,
but the number has now dropped to a five month supply instead. (A healthy market usually has a six month supply of available homes.) Because of the growing demand for houses and the lack of available properties, the prices of homes have increased, with the median home price now $236,400—an increase of 6.5 percent over the past 12 months. That’s more than three times the rate at which the average hourly wage has risen (2 percent), making it even more difficult for people to afford new homes. According to the Associated Press, one reason for the rise in housing demands is the fear that low mortgage rates might begin to rise as federal officials weigh the benefits of increasing a key interest rate from almost zero later this year. At the same time, the premiums that the Federal Housing Administration charges borrowers to insure mortgages are lower this year than in previous years, which makes it easier for people to afford that new house.
In June, properties sold on average in 34 days, the Associated Press reported, which was the shortest time since the Realtors began tracking in May 2011. In addition, there were fewer all-cash, individual investor and distressed home sales in the market. On the construction side of things, builders have been focusing on the rental market lately instead of the housing market. While approved building permits increased 7.4 percent to an annual rate of 1.34 million in June (the highest level since July 2007, according to the Commerce Department), most of those permits were for apartment complexes. Permits for houses last month only rose 0.9 percent. Meanwhile, the percent of Americans who own homes has fallen to 63.8 percent, the lowest level since 1989. According to Freddie Mac, the average 30-year fixed rate was 4.09 percent in July, which is an increase from a 52-week low of 3.59 percent.
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DESIGNING FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
POVERTY
A new study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released in late July reported that a higher percentage of children are living in poverty now than did during the Great Recession. About 22 percent of U.S. children lived below the poverty line in 2013, while only 18 percent lived below that line in 2008, according to the foundation’s 2015 Kids Count Data Book. In 2013, the official poverty line outlined by the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children. According to USA Today, the report ex-
amined data from several federal agencies from 2008 to 2013 to study state-by-state trends of 16 factors of children’s well-being: economics, education, health, family and community and more. More than one in four children (18.7 million kids overall) lived in low-income households in 2013, the report stated, with low-income households defined as those that use more than 30 percent of pre-tax income for housing. When it comes to different ethnicities, African American, Hispanic and Native American children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children, according to the report. Nearly 40 percent of African American children were living below the poverty line in 2013, while 37 percent of Native American and 33 percent of Hispanic children were below the line. In contrast, only 14 percent of Caucasian children were living below the poverty line at that time. While the number seems bleak, the
situation might not be as dire now that the unemployment rate has dropped to 5.3 percent nationwide; when the study was put together, the rate was 7. 5 percent. Another bright spot in the report was the fact that Minnesota took the top spot for overall child well-being. It was the first non-New England state to do so in more than a decade.
Medica and Mayo Clinic Health System. Employers and employees are talking about something new and exciting in southern Minnesota. That’s because Medica, a leading health plan, has teamed up with Mayo Clinic Health System, a top-ranked health care provider to deliver a new model for health care in southern Minnesota. Medica with Mayo Clinic Health System features providers and health plan experts working together to provide high-quality care at a lower cost. Employees get the care they need, when they need it and employers have the benefit of reduced cost. It’s the best of both worlds and one more reason why Medica is already the plan of choice for thousands of people. Talk with your broker, or call Medica at 952-992-3055.
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By Grace Webb Photo by Kris Kathmann
Ken Wilmes took a big risk when he started his own company more than 30 years ago—but it paid off as Industrial Fabrication Services exploded into a multi-million dollar business. In 1984, Ken Wilmes was at a crossroads. At the time, the 30-year-old Mankato native was working at JMF Manufacturing, a manufacturing business formerly located in Lake Crystal. There, he was a project manager, overseeing work on everything from feed mills to grain elevators. While he was successful in his work, the overall business was not, shutting its doors that year. And that left Wilmes with a choice to make. “I knew I had to make a big life change at that point,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m either going to go back to school or start my own business.’ I didn’t really cherish the thought of going back to school for four years or more, so I chose the business route.” His idea was to start a business built on the experience he already had and the customer relationships he’d already cultivated. He planned on buying JMF’s assets, talking five of his coworkers into becoming business partners. The plan was risky compared to the stability offered by a college degree, but Wilmes had the work experience and the passion to back it up. So he went to the local bank to secure a loan. He was denied.
Instead, the business was sold to a St. James man by the name of Noren Olson, who changed the name to Olson Engineering and kept Wilmes on as project manager. The first day, Wilmes began calling back all his old customers, telling them the business was back up and running. The next day, Olson announced he didn’t want the business after all. “He came in and said, ‘You know, I don’t think I really want to do this,’ and he walked out,” Wilmes said. Olson had never signed any papers, so he was able to walk away. That meant Wilmes and his coworkers had another chance to buy the assets, but the bank still wouldn’t offer a loan. But Wilmes was determined. He went out and found four private investors to kick in the remaining cash that was needed. With their help, they were able to secure the loan and buy the assets, opening Industrial Fabrication Services shortly after. Since then, the company has grown from those six original coworkers to more than 70 employees, working on multi-million dollar projects for customers around the world. continued > SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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Metal Maverick
Wilmes was born on a farm outside of Mankato in 1953. While the farm was small (a “hobby farm,” as Wilmes called it), there was more than enough work to keep him and his five siblings busy. “We had to do all kinds of stuff: feed the cattle, feed the chickens, feed the pigs, shovel manure,” he said. “My dad worked for Hubbard Milling in the 1960s, and they converted that plant from wooden spouts and wooden legs to a pneumatic system with the steel pipes. He brought all those old spouts home and paid us kids to unscrew them. He kept us busy. We had to work all the time. That’s where I got my work ethic from, growing up on the farm. You didn’t get to go play ball and that kind of stuff. There were always chores to do.” It was hard work, but Wilmes credits his childhood on the farm— and especially his parents’ work ethic—with instilling his own values of hard work and determination. In particular, he learned the importance of perseverance from his mother, who decided to go to college and become a teacher while Wilmes was in high school. Since Wilmes’ father was working full-time, his mother had to raise her large family while attending classes—as well as taking on extra cleaning jobs so that she could complete her studies without any debt. She eventually graduated, became a teacher, and then became a librarian.
“She set a real good example that hard works pay off,” Wilmes said. “She actually had my youngest sister when I was a senior. I came home from work one day, and I was changing clothes and getting ready to go to work, when she said, ‘You have to take me to the hospital because I’m going to have my baby now.’ So I took her to the hospital, and pulled up to the front of the building, and she got out and said, ‘You just go to work. Your job is important. I can walk the rest of the way myself.’ That’s the kind of person she was.” Despite his chores, Wilmes still managed to make time to join the wrestling team when he started attending Loyola High School. As he explained it, he was too small for football and couldn’t run fast enough for track, so that left wrestling. There, he competed in the 95 and 103 weight categories, going to state his junior year. But all that changed after he got his driver’s license. “By the time I was a senior, I had my driver’s license, a car, and a job,” he explained. “There were too many other things going on when I was a senior. I didn’t want to wrestle anymore; I wanted to work and chase girls.” Wilmes’ first job was at the McDonalds in Mankato. Back in the day, all McDonalds french fries were made by hand, which meant that Wilmes had to take raw potatoes, throw them in a sandpaper-lined
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Business Climate According to Wilmes, Minnesota isn’t a very business-friendly state. He points out the mountains of regulations businesses need to follow for simple expansions and the fact that Minnesota’s OSHA requirements are even more stringent than federal standards. “It’s very much harder to do business in Minnesota than in a lot of other states,” he said. “It’s harder for Minnesota companies to compete because we have higher OSHA standards than other states, so it costs us more to comply. And that makes us less competitive with our neighboring states.” Wilmes referenced the trouble that PolyMet is facing as it tries to expand near the Boundary Waters: the copper-nickel mining company has spent more than $20 million in the last 10 years trying to obtain a permit for its new plant. PolyMet recently submitted its third environmental impact statement for review, and, if it is approved next year, the company still needs to apply for another 21 permits before receiving permission to open the proposed $600 million plant. The project
would create an estimated 600 construction jobs and about 350 full-time jobs at the plant, but several environmental groups have protested the project, citing pollution concerns. An additional challenge facing Minnesota businesses is the state’s Renewable Energy Standard, which requires utilities to provide 25 percent of their total electrical generation from renewable sources by 2025. “All that kind of stuff means Minnesota’s electric rates have to be higher, since that kind of electricity costs more to produce,” he said. “It’s all small, but it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You just keep piling on these little things that cost a little bit more here and a little bit more there, and pretty soon, it’s a lot.” Still, while other companies have made the news by moving out of state to save on costs, Wilmes said he’s not going anywhere any time soon. “It’s not that easy to move a company,” he said. “A company is the combined talent of its people. We can’t just say we’re going to pick up and move to South Dakota, because most employees aren’t going to follow us; they have family here and don’t want to move out of state. Most companies are a collection of the knowledge of the people who work there.”
Industrial Fabrication Services | Lake Crystal
At any given time, Wilmes estimates that his employees are working on 50 different jobs, and that doesn’t include the new jobs they’re bidding on or the old jobs that might need some maintenance work. tub to peel them, rinse them off, chop them into fries and then cook them. Another old-fashioned oddity was the fact that McDonalds refused to hire female workers at the time. And Wilmes was paid only 90 cents an hour, which was minimum wage back then. “That’s where I learned a lot of my work ethic,” he said. “They were real strict about cleanliness and quality and service to the customer. And you know what? At 90 cents an hour, I still bought a car and a snowmobile. Ninety cents an hour went a lot further back then. That’s why I quit wrestling when I was a senior. I worked as much as I could. I liked making money.” This practical attitude followed with him after he graduated in 1971 and started a two-year course in agriculture business management at South Central College. The course included two year-long sessions and a required summer job in the middle. Wilmes made it through the first year and the summer job (for him, it was working for the Blue Earth County Service Co-Op), but then his interest waned. “I was only 18, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he said. “Everybody kept saying, ‘You’ve got to go to school. You’ve got to get an education of some kind.’ So like a good little boy, I signed up for classes. And South Central had a really good program. I was just too young and didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to get a job, work and make money.” Wilmes began working for Shari Candies, a now-closed candy
packing warehouse in Mankato, where he stayed for four years. There, he worked in the warehouse, transported products and even acted as chauffeur for his boss whenever there was a need. Along the way, he also started working part-time at a metal shop and taking machine shop classes at night. Eventually, he decided to find a job that paid better, and went to work at JMF Manufacturing in 1977. There, he started out working in the shop and eventually worked his way up into sales and project manager, mostly working with contractors that built feed mills, flour mills and grain elevators. Seven years later, JMF closed and Industrial Fabrication Services opened. At first, it was just six employees (all partners) and a bookkeeper, who also lent a hand as a cleaning woman. Slowly but surely, the company grew. “We actually made money every year,” Wilmes said. “As we grew, we brought in project managers. Then we doubled our sales and added another project manager. Now we have three full-time project managers.” Wilmes retained his position as a project manager in addition to his new role as general manager. “Everybody wears many hats around here,” he said. “That’s what you have to do in a small business.” Not only did the company pick up more jobs and project managers, it also picked up some big-name clients: Crysteel, CHS, ADM,
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Unimin, Excel Energy and Cambria. Products offered by Industrial Fabrication Services include industrial ductwork, smokestacks, mining equipment, feed mill hoppers, belt conveyors and dryers. The majority of jobs go to contractors who are building new plants, such as CHS, a farmers cooperative, and Unimin, a minerals producer. Wilmes’ business recently built all the equipment for a new soybean plant, fabricating dryers, heaters, aspirators and conditioners for the seven-story building. While most customers are located in the U.S., the business’s products have been shipped across the world to such places as Nigeria, Thailand and Trinidad. At any given time, Wilmes estimates that his employees are working on 50 different jobs, and that doesn’t include the new jobs they’re bidding on or the old jobs that might need some maintenance work. Project price tags range from $50 to $4 million—though the average contract runs closer to $50,000 to $350,000, he said. And projects can take anywhere from days to several months to complete— especially if the customer starts making changes halfway through. “Usually, when you get into the big jobs, they add stuff as you go,” Wilmes said. “There are a lot of changes in this industry. We have contractors who get into a job and realize they forgot to order something, so we have to throw it in quick. There’s a lot of hurry-up type stuff in this business. We’re always under the shotgun of
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Affording The ACA Industrial Fabrication Services pays 100 percent of its employees’ health insurance. Before the ACA, the company purchased $5,000 deductible policies and self-insured the employees down to a maximum $500 out-of-pocket cost. Now, with the new higher cost of insurance due to the ACA, the company had to raise employees’ minimum out-of-pocket costs to $1,300. “It’s costing us more money, and the bad news is, I think it’s going to go up a lot again,” Wilmes said. “They found out it’s not quite working like they thought it would. It’s something we didn’t need to do. Now we spent hundreds of millions to set this program up, and it’s a failure. Who’s going to reimburse the taxpayers for all that money?”
Industrial Fabrication Services | Lake Crystal
construction schedules and plant shut down schedules. So it’s a very intense, high-pressure job.” Some customers will supply Wilmes with fully detailed drawings for every step of the project, while others ask his business’s engineering, design and drafting department to basically start from scratch. “These projects take longer,” he said. “There’s a lot of back and forth with the customer as you’re designing and drawing. Once you get it done, you send it out for final approval, and they still might make a few more changes. By then, it’s usually a rush to get the project delivered, since we’ve spent so much time doing all the engineering but they need it now. You rush the plans to engineering, and, right behind them, the crews are starting to do construction. So it’s a real rat race to keep up. We hope it rains for a week and slows them down so we can catch up.” Wilmes added that his business takes on a lot of projects involving plant shutdowns for customers such as Ag Processing Inc. (AGP), a soybean processing company. AGP runs its plants 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with two weeklong shutdowns scheduled every year. It’s during these shutdowns that Industrial Fabrication Services goes in and replaces anything that needs replacing. “So we have to get all these parts made up so that when the plant shuts down, they can get it all put in in a week and start it back up,” Wilmes explained. “When they start to tear stuff out, they find a problem where they need some more parts made. So it gets to be very intense sometimes.” While large-scale projects are the norm, Wilmes’ employees also take on small jobs for local farmers and other customers. People can walk in and schedule work, even if it’s as small as welding a small piece for a farm implement.
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Getting to know you:
Ken Wilmes Education: Loyola High School (1971), classes at South Central College Family: wife Linda
Chris Cairns Adam Kopesky Commercial Estimators
Rickway Carpet North Mankato 625-3089 akopesky@hickorytech.net
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Hobbies: gardening, traveling, working on his hobby farm Favorite school subject: Social Studies Associations: Lake Crystal Lions Club, American Welding Society, MN Precision Manufacturing Association, National Federation of Independent Business, local Republican Party
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Industrial Fabrication Services | Lake Crystal
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“We thought about not doing that, but we kind of hate to do that because a lot of people locally depend on you for that,” Wilmes said. “It interferes with your big jobs because you have to stop and pull somebody off to weld this one little piece for the guy down the road. But we do it anyway. We don’t want to forget our roots, where we came from. A lot of times, those little jobs, when you were starting out, were the only jobs you had.” In the last five years, Wilmes has snagged several contracts for grain export terminals, mostly along the west coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The jobs involved building the gates and valves that the grain flows through, and some of Wilmes’ products were the largest ever built in the grain industry, handling 120,000 bushels of grain an hour. Recently, that business has slowed a bit, Wilmes said, just like the ethanol boom slowed a few years ago after providing his company with several good contracts. But Wilmes isn’t worried about this decrease. “We haven’t really had too many slow times, since we’re very diverse,” he said. “We can switch gears and go from fabricating structural steel to grain processing equipment, or both at the same time. We don’t have all our eggs in one basket. And actually that’s why a lot of our guys like working
here, because it is diverse and they’re not working on the same thing all the time.” One thing Wilmes is concerned about is finding enough quality workers, especially welders. He admitted he’s had trouble filling his welding positions, though he recently hired a bunch that had been laid off by other local manufacturing companies. “There is a workforce crunch,” he said. “You drive all over Mankato, and you see help wanted signs hanging all over. Most of these jobs are pretty decent jobs with good pay and good benefits. There are so many jobs nowadays where you can just sit behind a computer… Being in a welding shop, you’re going to get dirty, so you have to be the kind of person who likes that.” Wilmes also hires one or two interns every year from local high schools. “We try to get some young kids interested in the field and give them some experience,” he said. “There are people who like to get dirty and work with their hands, and that’s the kind of kids you have to attract. Schools are now realizing that not everyone wants to be an accountant. Some people really do like to work with their hands, and we need those people. We need furnace repairmen, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders. I think that’s one thing schools need to pay a little more attention to.”
THE ESSENTIALS
Industrial Fabrication Services Phone: 507-726-6000 Address: 460 Commerce Street Lake Crystal, Minnesota Web: www.ifssteelfab.com
Looking to the future, Wilmes seems pretty confident that business will keep going strong. He has good reason; his building is as full as it can be, projectwise—so full, in fact, that he’s taken to farming out some of his work to other fabrication companies. Right now, he said he passes about 25 percent of his work on to about six different shops. The advantage, he explained, is that he can pull back the work during slow times instead of laying off any employees. “We always want to keep our shop full, and keep our farmed out shops full too,” he said. “It’s just a good way to do business. If you go adding on and adding on and adding on, and try to do everything yourself, then when it does slow down, you’ve got more equipment, more building and more people than you need.” Comment on this story at connectbiz.com
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GRACE NOTES
Before we dive into my take on education in this month’s column, remember to check out our BPOY ad for instructions on how to nominate a friend or colleague for our annual Business Person of the Year contest (see pages 8-9). An expert panel of Minnesota State University College of Business professors selects three winners, with the top votegetter appearing on our January 2016 cover. Our contest has become a southern Minnesota tradition. Steve VanRoekel of Ridley, Inc. garnered last year’s laurels as Connect Business Magazine’s 2015 Business Person of the Year. Growing up, I heard all about the importance of going to college. It wasn’t just my folks who mentioned it; nearly every high school teacher also stressed how critical it
was to earn that precious college degree. In fact, it was just assumed at my high school that we’d move on to four-year institutions once we graduated. And, while taking that “traditional” path served me very well, I’ve come to realize just how narrow a path it is—and how many more options are out there for young (and not so young) students. Not only that, I’ve come to realize just how much our society needs these folks with different educational backgrounds. Now more than ever before, high school graduates are pushed towards some sort of post-secondary education institution, usually a four-year college or university. In Minnesota, about 70 percent of high school students immediately attend these institutions, according to the National Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis, and there’s been a 39 percent increase in the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred in the past 15 years. Of the students who went on to higher education, about 66 percent attended fouryear colleges, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the 2012-2013 academic year, about 1,840,200 college students graduated with bachelor’s degrees, nearly double the number of students (1,007,000) who earned associate’s degrees. The Princeton Review reports that the most popular fields of study at four-year
colleges and universities include business administration, social sciences, health professions and education. In other words, more kids are learning how to grade papers than how to repair a toilet—and that’s causing some real workforce shortages. A big part of the problem stems from cultural expectations. Parents now expect their children to go to college after high school—and not just college but a four-year Grace A. Webb college. All through Editor high school, students are taught that they need a college degree to be successful. On the other hand, tech schools are looked down on. But a look at the statistics shows a fouryear degree doesn’t automatically guarantee financial success. The Economic Policy Institute reports that young college graduates face an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent and an underemployment rate of nearly 17 percent. And those popular majors? Liberal arts majors have a 9 percent unemployment rate, and social science majors are stuck with 10.3 percent unemployment, according to The Atlantic. Even graduates who land jobs spend on average anywhere from three to nine months looking for a
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GRACE NOTES
job first, according to Money Magazine. After finding a job, recent graduates still face hurdles. The average starting salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree is $45,500 according to Money Magazine— not much for a Minnesota graduate who owes an average of nearly $31,000 in debt, according to the Institute for College Access & Success. On the other hand, 50 percent of students attending technical schools graduate debt-free, reports the College Board, and only 8 percent graduate with more than $30,000 in debt. That’s hardly surprising given that tuition for public two-year colleges costs about $3,300 according to the College Board, compared to $9,200 in tuition and fees for state residents at public colleges, $23,000 for out-of-state residents at public colleges, and $31,200 at private colleges, according to Collegedata.com. Not only are community college graduates leaving college with less debt, they’re actually making more money. CNN Money reported that 30 percent of Americans with associate’s degrees now make more
than those with bachelor’s degrees, while other research across several states shows that starting salaries for associate degree holders are higher than for those who have bachelor’s degrees. For example, air traffic controllers can make $113,600 a year, while registered nurses average about $65,900— not bad, for a two-year degree. (A caveat to those stats is the fact that many bachelor’s degree holders do catch up, income-wise, by mid-career.) And it’s not like the career options for associate’s degree holders are limited to dark, dank and dangerous work. When people think of manufacturing companies, the typical image is a group of grimy workers slaving away at an assembly line a la Henry Ford. But nowadays, factories are pretty much the opposite—full of high-tech equipment and floors so clean you could eat off them. Not only that, there are countless associate’s degrees you can earn. Don’t want a degree in welding? Community colleges like South Central College in North Mankato offer everything from farm business manage-
ment to culinary arts to biology. A lot of those fields of study, like the college’s Mechatronics Engineering Technology program, have a 100 percent job placement rate after graduation. And even if you end up earning the degree but hating your job, the credits seamlessly transfer to MSU-Mankato, thanks to the new “Future Mavericks” program, which means SCC grads can finish their bachelor’s degree in only two extra years. That’s why it’s so important to offer kids every possible chance to learn about potential careers before signing up for years of study and thousands of dollars of debt. Bring back “shop” classes to high schools. Encourage students to take advantage of internships and apprenticeships with local businesses. If nothing else is available during the school day, stress the importance of finding a summer job. (Actually, we should encourage kids to find employment either way.) I know lots of people say students should focus on their school work, and they should, but that doesn’t mean they
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Let us help protect what is important to you. can’t work a few hours a week too. Not only does it teach responsibility and money management, it also gives students the chance to explore the work world and start forming opinions on things like what kind of positions fit their personality best. I got my first job at my town newspaper when I was sixteen, and it helped me make up my mind that journalism was what I wanted to pursue after graduation. On the other hand, some students might hate the job they thought they would love, and realize they need to adjust their plans. Youth labor force participation rates have steadily declined over the past 15 years (due in no small part to the recent recession). Participation rates for youth 16-19 years old have fallen to 34 percent compared to 53 percent in 1998. If students don’t have jobs, they have less exposure to possible careers once they graduate from high school. And don’t just encourage them to work during high school—encourage them to work during college, too. People may think I’m crazy, but I think it’s good to work and study at the same time, especially if you’re fortunate enough to land a job in your intended field. As soon as I walked into MSU-Mankato, I made a beeline for The Reporter so I could apply for a position. I was sure I wanted to be a print journalist, so the newspaper was the natural place to go. But, a year later, I added on another job at KMSU Radio, where I eventually became the news director. Lo and behold, I discovered that I enjoy radio journalism just as much as print journalism. Those jobs led the way to countless other opportunities, including fantastic scholarships, and helped me decide what to do with myself once I’d graduated. When it comes to education, it’s not a one-size-fits-all deal. I know people who went to community colleges and are making more than I am, working at jobs they love. I know people who earned four-year degrees but are desperate for work. One of the features in this issue, Ken Wilmes, didn’t even finish school, yet he runs a multi-million dollar business. So it all comes down to what fits each person best. If we truly want to tackle the workforce shortage hitting our state, we’d do well to remember that.
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Any chamber of commerce, convention and visitors bureau, or economic development organization in our reading area—large or small, from Amboy to Winnebago—can post on our free bulletin board. For details, email editor@connectbiz.com.
Mankato
Madelia
Julie Nelson, South Central Minnesota Small Business Development Center
Karla Grev, Madelia Chamber
Every spring and fall, the SBDC partners with the Minnesota Department of Revenue to provide free seminars on sales and use tax. “Basic Minnesota Sales and Use Tax” is an introduction to sales and use taxes in Minnesota, designed for business owners, bookkeepers, purchasing agents and accountants who need a working knowledge of the law. The seminar is being offered in Mankato on Sept. 22 and Oct. 28. Register at http://www.revenue.state.mn.us/ businesses/sut/Pages/Resources.aspx.
Blue Earth Cindy Lyon, Blue Earth Chamber/CVB
Henderson Jeff Steinborn, Henderson Chamber
The “KICK OFF” for the new “Giant Building” was held during Giant Days in July, with contributions of more than $120,000. The building includes Chamber/CVB offices, a tourist info center, a souvenir shop, a Green Giant Memorabilia Museum, Buckey Legried’s Guinness World Record Cap Collection and restrooms. The bids have been received for the project, and planning continues!
Henderson is enjoying tremendous success with its Tuesday night Classic Car Roll In. Over 300 cars, 150 motorcycles and about 2,000 visitors show up each week. The Roll Ins continue through Sept. 15. Henderson Heritage Day is Oct. 3, featuring a tour of Brown Cemetery. The Joseph R. Brown Heritage Society has released a mobile app “Discover Henderson” featuring historic sights, an interactive walking tour, shops, eateries and more! Visit www.hendersonmn.com for more information.
Fairmont Christy Selbrade, Project 1590 Fairmont’s Project 1590 hosted “The Big Reveal” on May 14 and now the top 10 projects selected by the community are moving forward. Committees have been created, and regular meetings are being held. The support of the community continues to be needed. To find out how you can help Project 1590 or participate in an upcoming event. “Like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or go to project1590.com.
Gaylord Amy Newsom, Gaylord Chamber The Gaylord Area Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a free Johnny Holm Band street dance on Sept. 18. Food and beverage vendors will start serving at 5 p.m. and Johnny Holm will take the stage at 8:30 p.m. This free dance is a thank you to everyone for their patience during our downtown reconstruction. Contact Amy at anewsom@exploregaylord.org or 507-237-2338 for more information. 40
With fall in the air, it’s time for Madelia’s 19th Annual Capture of the Younger Brothers on Sept. 19 with all-day western activities. Madelia’s 7th Annual Pheasant Phest will be at the Madelia Golf Course on Oct. 3 with eight sporting clay ranges, five stand clay ranges, the Flurry and short range trap pits, perfect for youth and novice shooters. Experience Madelia at www.visitmadelia.com or call 507-642-8822.
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Mankato Kathryn Reeder, Visit Mankato Mankato is hosting the 2015 Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener on Oct. 9-10. The 2015 Opener will mark the fifth annual event. The prestigious event will put a spotlight on Greater Mankato and will serve as a resume builder for the community. The event will allow the Greater Mankato community to highlight its 9,000+ acres of hunting land in addition to its excellent outdoor recreational activities, including fishing, biking and kayaking. For more information, go to www.MNGPHO2015.com.
Mankato Jonathan Zierdt, Greater Mankato Growth Mark your calendars and be sure to join us for the annual Tour of Manufacturing on Oct. 3 from 9 a.m.–2 p.m. Community members will be able to stop by any participating manufacturers in the region throughout the day to take a tour, learn about the business and what
Local Chamber & Economic Development News
is being manufactured and be introduced to career opportunities. This is a free event that is open to the public. For more information visit tourofmanufacturing.com.
Nicollet Alesia Slater, Nicollet Chamber The Highway 14 project from North Mankato to Nicollet is in full swing. Motorists are encouraged to drive with extra caution; we have many kids that walk/bike to school and will be crossing main highways. Please be on the lookout for the crossing guards. Trunk or Treating is in October; if you would like to participate, please contact the chamber.
New Ulm Sarah Warmka, New Ulm CVB Join the shops of New Ulm for an evening of fashion, music and entertainment at Modenschau (German for “Fashion Show”) on Sept. 11. Voted best Oktoberfest by WCCO Viewer’s Choice, New Ulm Oktoberfest will take place over two weekends (Oct. 2-3 & 9-10) in four locations: downtown, Best Western Plus, Morgan Creek Vineyards, and Schell’s Brewery. The New Ulm Area Wedding Show will be held on Oct. 11 at the New Ulm Civic Center.
Region Nine Nicole Griensewic Mickelson, Development Com. Looking for grants to strengthen the vitality of your community? Attend Region Nine’s Grant Opportunity Forum on Sept. 24 from 8:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. at the South Central Service Cooperative in North Mankato. Registration will be accepted until Sept. 11. Reserve your seat today at www.rndc.org/2015FallGOF.
St. Peter Ed Lee, St. Peter Chamber
St. Peter Area Chamber of Commerce Diplomats have celebrated investments recently with ribbon cuttings at First National Bank Minnesota, Hesse Insurance, Sam and Abe’s Child Care and
Stones Throw Gallery. Congratulations to El Agave and Spring Touch Lawn Care for planting deeper roots in St. Peter. The town is revving up for Rock Bend Folk Festival on Sept. 12 and 13 and Oktoberfest on Oct. 25 and 26. Ground will be broken this fall for the new high school.
Sleepy Eye Trista Barka, Sleepy Eye Area Chamber Sleepy Eye Buttered Corn Days was a held on Aug. 21-22 and was huge success. Thank you to everyone involved! The Sleepy Eye Historical Society will have its Great Grass Roots Gathering on Sept. 27. To be part of the festivities, call Deb Joramo at 507-794-5053. In October, the Chamber will honor a Chamber business as the 2015 Manufacturer/Technology Award recipient and will have a reception for that business.
Waseca Colleen Carlson, Waseca Tourism FarmAmerica hosts the Fall Fair on Sept. 12-13 and Haunted Corn Maze weekends on Oct. 16-17 & 23-24. The Marching Classic is Sept. 19. Beer n Brats night is Oct. 1. Stop into Barden’s Bar to view the restored stained glass ceiling. The “Essential Herter’s Collector’s Collection” is on display through December at the Waseca County Historical Society. For more information, visit www.discoverwaseca.com.
Waseca Kim Foels, Waseca Area Chamber Waseca Chamber’s annual Business and Industry Luncheon will be Oct. 22 at Lakeside Club, recognizing the 2015 Business of the Year award. Nominate a business for this prestigious award through Sept. 22. The business must be a current member of the Waseca Area Chamber. You can find information on nominating criteria at wasecachamber.com/chamber/chamber-recognitionevents/.
THE FUTURE IS YOURS TO CUSTOMIZE
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By Deb Schubbe Photo by Kris Kathmann
St. Peter artist and business owner Bob Vogel travels the world to find inspiration for his unique artwork. “Just show up.” That’s Bob Vogel’s philosophy for reaching a goal. “To start anything, you first have to show up, and good things will usually follow.” The philosophy has taken him a long way. Who would have thought a colorblind, inner-city high school student, who jumped into college on a basketball scholarship and majored in business economics, would travel all seven continents as carefree as the wind and chisel a career out of the fragile beauty of stained glass? Vogel started working with stained glass as a hobby, making tabletop lamps that take about 100 hours each to complete. Today, he owns his own studio, Stained Glass Studio, located in St. Peter, and is working on his biggest project yet: a 40-panel window stretching 200 square feet for a church in Watertown, South Dakota. continued > SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
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Colors Of The World
Born in 1949, Vogel grew up in Minneapolis Central with two older brothers. He was an Eagle Scout and loved sports. At 15, he took a job as a stock boy at Dave’s Superette, where he advanced to cashier. He also mowed lawns and shoveled snow for different residences. When he wasn’t working, he was at the park. “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, I was at the park playing baseball, football, hockey, and basketball,” he said. He was focused on hockey in eighth grade—until he grew nine inches in eight months, shooting up to 6’2”. “So the basketball coach pulled me aside and said, ‘No more hockey for you,’” Vogel chuckled. “I was the white basketball player on Minneapolis Central’s team and was named the player of the year in ’67.” Vogel’s parents, who had never graduated high school themselves, knew the importance of a good education, and their goal was to put all three of their sons through college. With Vogel’s newfound height and skill, the
goal became a bit easier. “All that playing paid off,” he said. “If you put in the time, things happen.” He attended North Dakota State University in Fargo on a basketball scholarship, majoring in business economics, and worked three summers at a Ford Motors assembly plant. He graduated in 1971, but then his life goals changed when he heard the song, “Are You Sitting Comfortably” by the Moody Blues. “They were poetic back in the seventies,” he said with a smile, quoting a few lines about the Seven Wonders of the World: “The seven wonders of the world he’ll lay before your feet, in far-off lands, on distant shores, so many friends to meet.” Those words awakened his desire to travel. After all, as the song says, the world was laid at his feet. “I was bitten by the bug and wanted to travel as much as I could,” he said. To afford his dream, Vogel painted houses throughout his summers. When the weather turned cold, he’d take what money
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he had and go wherever he felt like going. “I squirreled away money in a mattress, and when October would come along, I’d put the ladders away and head for wherever I wanted to go next, with whatever money I had saved,” he said. “You didn’t need a whole lot back then, only time and desire. Two thousand dollars and you could go around the world.” Vogel didn’t find language a barrier, or the lack of planning. He learned some French in high school and hung out with taxi drivers when he arrived somewhere. (“They were the people who knew where the black market for changing money was and where the dollar-a-night-hotels were,” he explained.) It didn’t take long before he could stumble through basics in German, Portuguese and Spanish. He bought one-way tickets, never considering return dates until he’d run out of money. “I was stuck in Indonesia once and was told by my travel agent it’d be $1,500 to get back to America,” he recalled. “I didn’t have
Stained StainedGlass GlassStudio Studio || St. St.Peter Peter
Vogel’s house painting bankrolled his dreams well. As a meticulous worker with a great eye for detail, he landed some prestigious jobs, including painting Prince’s home in Chanhassen and houses for other high-end clientele.
that, so through asking a series of questions over a half an hour, trying to find another way, they found a different route for only $150. Things usually end in your favor, if you’re aware of what you want to do.” He learned to face these types of obstacles on his very first trip. He travelled by boat from New York to England and boarded a bus in Paris that broke down in Yugoslavia. From there, he took the train through Bulgaria. “When the 10-day war for India broke out in ’72, I was stuck in Iran with the roads closed,” he said. “That’s how I took my first
airplane ride ever.” After that winter-long trip, Vogel thought it was time to roll up his sleeves and join the working world. He laughed as he remembered his first interviews with 3M and IBM. “I got a haircut and applied to be a young, junior executive,” he said. “They laughed at me and said, ‘A couple of weeks after college, sure, but what’s this seven-month gap?’” He didn’t get the job, and he didn’t change his lifestyle. “In 1974, I hitchhiked to San Francisco, sitting-on-the-dock-of-the-bay kind of
thing, and took a freighter loaded with Planters Peanuts, Johnnie Walker and locomotive engines to China,” he said, adding that he’d debarked in Hong Kong. “But I heard the freighter went on to Vietnam to deliver peanuts. And Johnnie Walker.” In 1975, a new job led to a new path. “I was a taxi driver not making much money in the winter, and I didn’t like that, so I signed up to volunteer [in the Peace Corps],” he said. The Peace Corps accepted him for the Philippines, and International Volunteer Service accepted him for Papua New
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Colors Of The World
Vogel holds a display of his numerous passport photos. His travel photos adorn the walls of his studio.
Guinea, which was listed as the “most remote place” any of the volunteers had been sent. “That was exciting to me,” Vogel said, “but I missed all of ’76, the tall ships and elections that happened in America then.” Two years later, Vogel took the long route home through Singapore, Hong Kong, Bali and Europe. “I stopped to see a friend who was playing basketball in Vienna,” he said. “I’d gotten an offer to play in the European league the first time I was there, but I had money in my pocket, so I didn’t want to do it.” Vogel’s house painting bankrolled his dreams well. As a meticulous worker with a great eye for detail, he landed some prestigious jobs, including painting Prince’s home in Chanhassen and houses for other high-end clientele. His eye for detail also guided another talent—photography. On his first trip, he took his parents’ 110 Brownie camera along. Later, he won a 35mm camera in a poker game in Singapore and also bought a Nikon camera. Vogel is colorblind, so he developed black-and-white films in his bathroom and had his color pictures developed by someone else. That same eye for detail blessed him in 1980. He had a couple months of winter before house-painting would start, so he took a course in stained glass. That’s when a new bug bit him: artistic expression. He already loved the way music had inspired him to travel the world, and he loved the way he could capture the world with a lens. Now he wanted to capture the world in stained glass. With an array of exotic photographs displayed on his walls and music ranging from New Orleans ragtime to Irish folk songs filling his workroom, he practiced soldering and cutting stained glass. He started with a few lamps. Around lamp No. 17, he had the hang of it. It was then that he started playing with the idea of trading his 46
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ladders for lamps to support his travels. He continued painting, traveling and lamp-making over the next decade, gaining a future travel companion and fellow artist in 1981—his son Alex. Vogel pulled Alex out of school to travel a few times (because the educational value seemed worth it, he said), but a planned trip to Paris fell through in 1994 because Alex started
Colors Of The World
Finding Inspiration According to Vogel, “Artists get their own ideas, but they also get some from standing on the shoulders of those before them, and put it all together to get something new.” A customer gave him the idea to flatten wine bottles and hang them on the wall, so Vogel added stained glass pieces shaped like drips to appear as though wine is dribbling from the bottle.
Stained Glass Studio | St. Peter
having trouble at school. Instead of losing Alex’s non-refundable ticket, Vogel passed it on to Victoria, an art-minded free spirit he’d been dating for a couple of years. “She moved heaven and earth to get a 24-hour passport so we could leave the next day,” he said. After Victoria graduated nursing school, she and Vogel were traveling through Spain in 2000 when she popped the question. They were married on the Rock of Gibraltar. Six months later, Victoria spotted the high-profile, 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home on busy Highway 169 (Minnesota Avenue) in St. Peter, thinking it would be perfect for a business. Alex had just graduated that year and moved to Colorado, but Victoria and her son, Garrett Owen, and Vogel moved into the large brick house. By this time, Vogel had 75 lamps waiting to grace his soon-to-be studio, which took six years to set up in a garage and small shop behind the house. The couple put in a veranda, a courtyard and brick fencing with wrought iron accents. They had contacted 16 masons, but no one wanted to tackle the fence the way the Vogels wanted it—with halfinch thick rails in varying heights—so rather than settle, they took on the project themselves. Much like Vogel did on his trips, they jumped in with a learn-as-you-go approach. “We went to the library and studied the one-two-three’s of masonry and went slow and methodical, figuring out each step as we went along,” Vogel said. “It took years, but we got it right.” With Victoria his color coordinator, Vogel continued his art while building the studio. Some of the cathedrals of Europe influenced his work, along with colors from the South Pacific. “I got a few commissions, and if I wasn’t sure about a job, I’d think, ‘Well, we can figure that out,’” he said. “We’d look at it and say we
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Colors Of The World
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Creating Beauty Artist Bob Vogel sets a champagne bottle in his kiln to flatten overnight. Next, he puts the flattened glass onto a metal form and cooks it again. The glass then folds around the form. A beautiful shape comes out that can be a bowl for potpourri or a votive or candy dish. “Heat glass to 1,250 degrees and it will slump,” he said. “At 1,350 degrees, it’ll tack and fuse to itself. At 1,450 degrees, it puddles up and smoothes over, and rounds the corners.”
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Colors Of The World
need to do this first, then that, and we’ll figure that out.” In 2006, Vogel’s inventory was up to 150 lamps and 100 windows when, two weeks before they were set to open the studio, an ember from a campfire the night before set the place ablaze. Along with personal property, Vogel lost 100 of the lamps that had taken years to accumulate, a number of windows, glass-cutting and soldering equipment, and many of the photos he loved, not to mention the music that spoke so powerfully to him.
“We looked at the charred remains of the studio,” Vogel said, “and we said, ‘We could build another one.’” Gifted artist Alex designed the new studio. “We had someone else frame it, but we did the rest,” Vogel said. “We learned how to brick—keep those lines straight!—and shopped for windows. Everything was built around the windows and doors.” They opened the new studio in October 2006 with the help of Ed Lee, president of the St. Peter Chamber of Commerce. “He’s really been a wonderful voice for
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Colors Of The World
World Traveler A man of the world, Vogel’s travels include India, Bulgaria, Hungary, Iceland, Australia, Argentina, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Istanbul, Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Greece, Egypt, Kenya, Turkey, Rio, Beijing, Chile, Peru and Antarctica. Victoria says it’s easier to list the places he hasn’t been than to name everywhere he’s visited. Throughout his trips, Vogel stayed in a lot of dollar-a-night places with rats the size of raccoons, “because I was trying to save money to travel more,” he said. “But as I got older, I upgraded a bit,” he added, with a smile at his wife. He also used pop-up Volkswagen buses, but when he traveled through Africa with his son, he didn’t want to go bus-style. They rented a land rover instead. One fond memory springs from his first journey, which took him to Europe. It was a seven-month trip, and he ended up in India for three months. “Lost about thirty-five pounds there, and I wasn’t overweight,” he said. “I was 21 and played basketball, but they didn’t have meat there. Not much to eat.” Another trip took him to Puerto Rico in 1978, where he tried his hand at gambling. “I don’t go to gambling places, but I’d always wanted to do that—play roulette at a Puerto Rican casino,” he said. “I played the Marx Brothers—No. 5 red (from the film “A Night in Casablanca”). I won twice and made some money, so I went to the airport. I just wanted to go touch South America, to say that I’d been there, so I flew to Venezuela.” Throughout his 40 years of travel, he visited India four times, but it wasn’t until the last trip that he saw the famous Taj Mahal. “But the fourth time was a charm,” he said, pointing to the picture of the Taj Mahal that graces a wall of his studio. 48
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Stained Glass Studio | St. Peter
us,” Victoria said. After the fire, the business turned a corner, and Vogel credits his son for that. According to Vogel, Alex suggested that he should try his hand at turn-of-the-century style art, based on Czechoslovakian artist Alphonse Mucha’s portraits of famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. Vogel created four windows inspired by that artwork, and Alex painted the faces. Only the faces are painted; the rest comes alive with colored and textured glass. “I would cut the face out and send it to Colorado,” Vogel said. “Alex would paint the face on and send it back.” Alex does a lot of research for a design. “The more information he has the better,” Vogel said. “Then he draws up a sketch and we’ll all look at it for a number of days or weeks and decide what changes or tweaks are needed. If one of us feels real strong about a certain thing, we usually work around that, but there’s a lot of back and forth input.” Though Vogel does the fabrication, Victoria has the eye for colors and textures. “Colors depend upon whether a piece will be used as a window or hanging on a wall,” she said. “We have so many choices, but once I find the one, I know.” “We’ve got a team,” Vogel said, “and that makes us capable of a lot of things. It’d be difficult for only one person to do it all.” “We can get pretty close to any photograph or painting,” Victoria added. Sometimes, however, small adjustments are made. Victoria once noticed in a photograph of historic art that the female subject had a large Adam’s apple. She knew no one would want to see that, so they smoothed out the neck. Now in their fifteenth year of business, Vogel’s largest finished project is a 12-footby-5-foot depiction of the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, which graces the entrance of Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato. Installed this spring, the stunning piece was created out of 13 glass sections fit into five frames. The project took three years from discussion, planning, and crafting. “Alex drew it out, and then we saw it in glass before we soldered,” Vogel said. “There were just a few extra lines that didn’t look correct, so we made changes.”
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Stained Glass Studio Address: 215 N Minnesota Ave St. Peter, Minnesota Phone: 507-931-3818 Web: www.stainedglassstudiostpeter.com
Right now, the trio is working on a project ten times bigger than the Bethany window. The Watertown, South Dakota project stands 35 feet high and has required several discussions with a committee. They expect to have it finished in another six months. Vogel said they are open to pretty much any kind of special order. For example, two customers came in with a landscape of Mount Rushmore painted by one’s father. Vogel will be replicating the painting in stained glass. He could no doubt capture any atmosphere in his art, since he’s literally seen the world. _______________________________ Vogel added a kiln to his tools several years ago, bringing jewelry, dishes and home décor to his inventory. “Every morning we open the kiln to see a surprise,” he said. “We’re getting better at it, and people are buying it, so we’re going to expound on it this winter.” During the last six winters, Vogel has given classes Saturday mornings, which he advertised on his website, www. stainedglassstudiostpeter.com. The website helps greatly, because highway traffic hasn’t brought the number of customers they’d hoped for, nor has the small sign. “We’re in combined residential-small business zoning, so we can only have so big of a sign,” Victoria explained. To gain exposure, they’ve done some television advertising. Recently, they’ve targeted the Twin Cities, but they’ve also advertised around Mankato on HGTV, cable TV, and TNT. Vogel’s plans beyond art include traveling America and writing a book about his worldwide adventures.
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Deb Schubbe writes from Wells.
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HOT STARTZ!
Cafe Euro For Renata Konopka, the path that led her to opening a restaurant in Sleepy Eye was a long and twisting one. Konopka grew up in Krakow, Poland. She lived with her mother, while her father, a U.S. citizen, lived in America. When Konopka was young, her father tried to bring her with him to the U.S., but Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain at the time and her government didn’t allow her to go. But Konopka was determined to build a better life for herself. She managed to save up enough money to purchase a “holiday” visa to Italy when she was 19. Instead of returning to Poland, she stayed in Italy for another two years until she managed to obtain the necessary paperwork to immigrate to the U.S. in 1990. At first, Konopka lived in Los Angeles with her father. However, two years later, she went on a vacation to Colorado and met her husband, John. For the next 10 years, the couple stayed in Colorado as Konopka worked as general manager for the local Country Inn and Suites. Then some of Konopka’s in-laws asked her and her husband to move to Austin, Minnesota to help run a hotel, drawing on Konopka’s management experience. Konopka and her husband helped for two years before deciding to try it on their own, buying Seven Gables, an inn in Sleepy Eye. They ran the inn for 12 years but recently ran into financial difficulties. “It was a very tough time we went through,” Konopka said. “The last three years were the worst years of my life.”
Eventually, the couple had to file for bankruptcy. But instead of giving up, they decided to start over. They had already bought a building with the hopes of starting a restaurant for their inn guests, and they went ahead with those plans, opening Cafe Euro in April. “We had to start from zero, but we’re very hard working people, and we believe in ourselves,” Konopka said. Konopka’s restaurant serves a variety of foods from different European countries. Everything is made from scratch, and nothing is fried. “So far, everybody likes it,” she said. “I hope they’ll continue to support us and come here, so the business can grow.” CAFE EURO Address: 136 Main Street West Telephone: 507-300-1035 Facebook Page: Cafe Euro
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Comment on Hot Startz at connectbiz.com Very New or Re-formed Businesses or Professionals New To Our Reading Area
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For Josh Raines, pool has always been a passion. Now, he’s found a way to make it an even bigger part of his life: opening the Kato Cue Club, Mankato’s first pool hall in more than a decade. “I’m just a huge, huge fan of the sport,” Raines said. “I’d like to bring quality to Mankato and advance the sport in a good direction.” Raines is a Mankato native who graduated from Mankato East High School. He met his wife, Erin, at a pool hall (of course), and the two of them moved to Burnsville so she could attend college in Eagan. While she studied, Raines worked at Mystic Lake in the casino finance department. In 2005, once Erin had graduated, the two of them moved back to Mankato. The couple now has three children: Jenevieve, Jacobie and Jovie. When Raines first moved back to Mankato, he took a job at Papa John’s delivering pizzas, which he did for seven years. But he never forgot his passion for pool. He enjoyed the game so much that he practiced for hours every week and participated in tournaments across the Midwest. It was only a matter of time before he opened his own pool hall. In January, Raines opened the Kato Cue Club. The pool hall has two levels, 14 pool tables and a dining room that serves gourmet burgers and other meals. Raines hosts weekly tournaments every Friday night and a constant stream of events on the other nights. Two of his pool tables are set up with cameras for live-streaming and commentary.
Between cooking, hosting, serving and giving lessons, Raines keeps busy; he works about 115 hours every week, often from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. But he says it’s worth it. “Pool was always going to be a part of my life,” he said. “[A pool hall] was something that I really wanted to do. I just had to make good choices and make some sacrifices to try to put myself in the best position to make that become a reality.” KATO CUE CLUB Address: 121 East Cherry Street Telephone: 507-388-7665 Web: katocueclub.com
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HOT STARTZ!
Very New or Re-formed Businesses or Professionals New To Our Reading Area
DC Archery For Dave Franklin, starting an archery shop wasn’t about making big bucks. It was about creating a place where his kids could practice their sport. “The kids needed a place to shoot,” he said. Franklin has two kids, Morgan, 17, and Connor, 13. Both of them compete on a national level, with Morgan taking home the top prize at last year’s national competition in Las Vegas. Franklin grew up shooting, too. He was born in Winnebago and learned archery from his brother-in-law as a kid. He attended Winnebago’s schools until the high school shut down and he had to transfer to Truman High School for his senior year. After high school, he studied accounting at Rasmussen College. Once he graduated in 1990, he came back to the area and began working for Grandberg Drainage, where he stayed eight years, before taking his current job as a sanitation supervisor at Seneca Foods. Franklin bought a building and opened his archery shop in the middle of December. He works with several vendors to supply archery equipment, and he also hosts league events where people can come shoot at either his indoor or outdoor range. The indoor range has eight 30-yard lanes and is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There is also a video system available for self-coaching. Archers can rent the system, which includes four cameras from different angles. The video is played back on a computer at the site, so archers can more
easily pinpoint areas they want to improve. “It’s a good tool to see what they’re doing, wrong or right,” Franklin said. The outdoor range has four targets that can be shot at from distances from 10 to 100 yards away, and it’s open Mondays and Wednesdays. To join a league, a shooter pays $10 a week and brings his or her own equipment. Every shoot is handicapped, so archers of any level can participate and do well. Franklin said most archers come from outside of Winnebago, with about a dozen league shooters showing up for indoor events. “All you can do is come and try it,” he said. “I think you’ll like it.” DC ARCHERY Address: 27 South Main Street Telephone: 507-600-9227 Facebook Page: DC Archery
To be considered for one of three spots in the November Hot Startz!, email the editor at editor@connectbiz.com. Businesses considered must have started—or changed greatly in form—within one year of our publishing date. Professionals chosen must be new to our reading area.
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Gaylord From the Chamber: The City of Gaylord will soon have a new restaurant downtown. Owners Tim and Wendy Goldsmith are planning a soft opening for 4th Street Pizza and Pub on Sept. 15. Eunoia Family Resource Center recently opened a new office in Gaylord at 112 5th Street.
Fairmont From the Chamber: new members include Christy K. Selbrade, financial advisor for Edward Jones, and The Healing Place. The Chamber is offering a social media and website management seminar on Sept. 17 at the Southern Minnesota Educational Campus. Cost is free for chamber members and $20 for non-members. Peterson Anthony Insurance Agency, Inc. hired new agent Carrie Westcott.
Kasota Chankaska Creek Ranch and Winery was recently named “Best Minnesota Winery of 2015” by the Star Tribune.
Le Sueur From the Chamber: New members include USA Mechanical LLC and K & R Graphics.
Lake Crystal Joseph O’Sullivan has been hired as a junior ag lender at MinnStar Bank.
Madelia From the Chamber: new members include Connect Real Estate Group and
Boyum Window & Siding. The Madelia Community Hospital & Clinic (MCHC) recently purchased a new point-of-care ultrasound that was funded by a $40,000 grant through the Minnesota Department of Health Rural Hospital Capital Improvement Grant Program.
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Mankato The Mankato Clinic has been named one of the Top 150 Workplaces in Minnesota by the Star Tribune. The Mankato Clinic was also recently honored for delivering highquality care to UCare’s Medicare members at UCare’s annual “A Salute to Excellence!” Marco, Inc.’s CEO, Jeff Gau, has been named as an EY Entrepreneur of the Year in the Upper Midwest. Marco also recently purchased Hadley Office Products.
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Year-Over-Year Growth.” Eide Bailly, LLP has named Ben Ellingson as partner-in-chief of the Mankato office. The Zonta Club of Mankato recently named its president, Kate Loging, the Zonta Woman of the Year. Feeding Our Communities Partners (FOCP) was recently the recipient of two grants: one from the Mankato Clinic Foundation for $4,500 and one for $5,000 from Archer Daniels Midland Company. The American Cancer Society is hosting its fourth annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Mankato on Oct. 10 at Spring Lake Park. The YWCA Mankato will host its fourth annual Women’s Leadership Conference: Passion, Purpose & Power on Nov. 4-5 at the Verizon Wireless Center. Online registration is available on the YWCA website.
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From Swanson Hinsch & Co. Chartered: Samantha C. Hay recently achieved her certified public accountant designation. From Minnesota State University, Mankato: Mike Gustafson has been named vice president of the Division of Strategic Business, Education and Regional Partnerships. Jones Metal Products has changed its name to Jones Metal, Inc. Century 21 Atwood Realty, Inc. recently hired agents Mara Heinze, Erik Jensen and Bonnie Kruger. Habitat for Humanity of South Central Minnesota recently received a $10,000 donation from Union Pacific Railroad. The Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation recently received a second year of grant funding from the Blue Cross
507-354-2716 • www.newulmfurniture.com
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and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation for its Quality Child Care Program. This grant will expand the program to Le Sueur, Wabasha, Waseca and Winona Counties. The Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota received a $5,000 grant from Xcel Energy to support STEM learning. Farrish Johnson Law Office attorneys Scott V. Kelly, William S. Partridge and Steven H. Fink have been selected to the 2015 Minnesota Super Lawyers list. In addition, attorney Daniel J. Bellig has been selected to the 2015 Rising Stars list. The Key City Sertoma Club presented the 2014/2015 Key City Sertoman of the year to Dave Spangenberg. Region Nine Development Commission recently appointed Brad Ahrenstorff, mayor of Lake Crystal, as the Chairman of the Commission. In addition, Executive Director Nicole Griensewic Mickelson was recently appointed Vice Chair of the Greater Minnesota Partnership. Quentin Beadell of Community Bank Mankato received the Legacy of Community Banking Award from the Independent Community Bankers Association of Minnesota for 58 years of service to the industry. Beadell currently serves as owner and president of Community Bank.
North Mankato Capstone recently named Nancy Carlson as the first recipient of the Capstone Fellowship in Children’s Literature. Carlson will spend one month in residence at the Anderson Center. Jordan Sands has been awarded the 2014 Safety Achievement Award by the Industrial Minerals Association-North America (IMA-NA). The business has a zero reportable injury rate. South Central College’s campuses in Faribault and North Mankato were named “Star Campuses” for the 2014-15 school year at the Minnesota State College Student Association (MSCSA) General Assembly. Three Multimedia Technology students from SCC competed at the National SkillsUSA Conference in June, landing in the top ten for their events. Caleb Curran and Dylan DeMarce earned the first place
medal in their event, while Dan Smith placed seventh in his event. Connect Real Estate Group recently hired realtors Tana Stoufer and Adam Huiras.
NORTH MANKATO
Capstone The Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation awarded 10,000 books with a total value of $163,421 to area children through a partnership with Capstone.
New Ulm From the Chamber: TBG Entertainment is the chamber’s newest member. NU-Telecom celebrated its 110th anniversary this year. It will continue celebrating all year by giving away more than 110 prizes. Eunoia Family Resource Center recently celebrated its first six months in business, as well as hiring Lucia Beckendorf as a licensed clinical therapist.
Minnesota Lake Caitlin Hoechst recently accepted the position of office manager for Wells Federal Bank in the Minnesota Lake Branch.
St. James Super Fair Foods is now serving the Mayo Clinic Health System. Mayo Clinic Heath System in St. James has been recognized by the National Rural Health Association as one of the top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the entire country.
St. Peter River’s Edge Hospital & Clinic recently hired Gregg Chartrand as its new chief
financial officer. The hospital recently received a 4-star rating (out of 5 stars) from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Quality Initiative. Lager’s Inc. was recently presented with a 50 Year Plaque by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in recognition of 50 years as a Chrysler dealer.
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Sleepy Eye The SouthPoint “Kickin’ it for Kids” 5K will be at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 9, beginning at Allison Park. Amy Schwab is the new owner of Hope & Faith Floral, with Kelly Blick working as store manager. The Sleepy Eye Farmers’ Market runs 3-5 p.m. on Mondays through the month of September in the Sleepy Eye City Building parking lot.
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Waseca From the Chamber: Dr. Jim Rundquist at the Premier Veterinary Center received the chamber’s Roots Award; Homestead Goods & Vintage received the First Dollar Award; and Edward Jones received the Progress Award. There will be a Business After Hours event at HyVee on Nov. 3 and at the Waseca County Historical Society on November 16. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Minnesota has named Michelle Redman as the new executive director. American Family Insurance donated $2,500 to Lutheran Social Services’ Senior Nutrition Program. Crystal Valley Cooperative donated $25,000 to Janesville Area Foundation. Rotary Club of Waseca raised $4,000 at a recent fundraiser and received a $3,000 match from the district. These funds will go towards the Waseca schools’ Junior Achievement Program. Milt Chaudhari is the new owner of Crossings Inn & Suites. Jesse Sherman is a new plant manager of Cinch Connectivity Solutions. Dave Vanna is a new plant manager at Delta Waseca.
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PART II
Training The Next Generation Across southern Minnesota, employers are facing a workforce shortage as they try to fill positions within their businesses—especially in the technical Grace A. Webb fields of science, enEditor gineering, technology and manufacturing. While there are several factors at play, one of the biggest is the way we look at the next generation of workers. In light of this, it stands to reason that parents and schools should start encouraging more students to explore options beyond a traditional four-year college experience. Part of that means showcasing different career choices to students long before they start applying for colleges. And southern Minnesota may just be ahead of the curve when it comes to that.
K-12 Programs That Encourage New Perspectives Several area school districts offer students the chance to explore different career paths through the Minnesota Community and 56
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Technical College Credit Program. These programs allow students to study anything from web page design to cabinetmaking during their school day, while simultaneously earning credits that transfer to technical or community colleges. Teachers offer guidance to students as early as 8th grade or even before, since students need to take certain prerequisites before they’re allowed to join a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program. According to Mankato East High School Principal Jeff Dahline, the Mankato district has offered CTE classes for several years, and the demand just keeps growing as more and more students enroll. In particular, industrial technology courses have seen a popularity spurt in recent years. Dahline added that there has been talk about expanding the offerings to include more life sciences and health-related fields. “We want to make sure every student is prepared to do what they want to or need to after graduation,” he said. The real challenge in this program is making sure all the pieces fit, since it can be difficult for students to complete the necessary graduation requirements (in classes such as math and language) while
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taking on more “elective”-type courses within the CTE programs. Another program offered at several area schools is “Project Lead the Way,” a nationwide initiative that focuses on technology, engineering and math in all levels of elementary and high school. The middle school program, Gateway to Technology, introduces students to automation, robotics, green architecture and more. Meanwhile, high school programs range from PLTW Biomedical Science, which leads students through the investigation and analysis of a supposed crime, to PLTW Engineering, which teaches students about the engineering design process. Some examples of PLTW in Minnesota schools include the high school engineering program at United South Central High School in Wells and the Gateway to Technology program at Dakota Meadows Middle School in Mankato. Every PLTW program has a curriculum component, a professional development component and an assessment at the end of the course for feedback. Some programs are offered to schools as basic classes, while others allow students to earn AP credits. When it comes to this program, schools are required to finance teacher training as well
A continuing series on Workforce Issues in Southern Minnesota
as purchase equipment and supplies—and pay the annual participation fee, which ranges from $750 for PLTW Gateway to $3,000 for PLTW Engineering. Yet a third option comes from Junior Achievement of the Upper Midwest, an organization that offers kids interactive lessons about business and entrepreneurship. Classroom programs are available for school districts from kindergarten to high school classes, focusing on world skills such as money management, business skills and exploring economics. Often, the programs (which are usually only a few sessions each) are fit within a different class, such as a high school economics class. Both teachers and volunteers help with instruction. In the Greater Mankato area alone, more than 7,800 kids participated in these lessons during the 2014-2015 school year, an increase of 800 students compared to last year, and 250 adults volunteered. Besides the classroom portion, Junior Achievement also offers experiences that
allow students to put what they’ve learned to use. JA BizTown is a daylong event that places students in a 10,000 square ft. kidsized city where they interview for jobs, elect a mayor, get “paid” salaries and run the city. JA Titan allows teams of students to participate in an online competition where they create and market a company within a business simulation. JA Job Shadow, like its name implies, takes students to real businesses to learn skills from professionals. The latest event to reach southern Minnesota is the new “Start It Up!” Camp that was hosted at MSU Mankato this summer. About 30 students attended the weeklong camp, which was a mix of classroom lectures by MSU faculty members, teambuilding activities, networking and field trips to area businesses. Lectures focused on everything from perfecting “elevator pitches” to recognizing market competition. Some activities included kayaking down the Minnesota River, attending a Mankato MoonDogs game and visiting the
Taylor Corporation’s Innovation Center. Throughout the week, the 33 campers also had to come up with an idea for a product and create a short video pitching it to a panel of judges on the last day. And some of the ideas these high school students came up with were pretty exciting. One team pitched an app called “Remember the Date,” which not only reminded users of important upcoming dates but also would sift through people’s social networks to find their interests and suggest gifts (these campers earned the judges’ “Future Entrepreneur Award”). Another team designed an app called “My Oven,” which would sync up to a device in a person’s oven and turn it off before the food could burn by regulating the food’s temperature. “[Camp] was amazing,” said Matu Kelly, one of the creators of the “My Oven” app. “I learned a lot, especially about being open to opportunities that come your way.” The hope is to make the “Start It Up!” camp an annual event.
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“In this country, we have so many opportunities for our young men and women, and there are no barriers anymore. That’s why it’s so important to have the businesses and colleges and universities come into our community [and meet with students].”
Bringing The Choices To Students In addition to in-class programs, some school districts are offering special events to introduce K-12 students to possible careers. Starting in 2014, the Waseca Area Chamber of Commerce worked with Waseca High School to offer the initiative, “Discover Waseca Careers,” which allows high school seniors the chance to visit 20 local businesses and interact with business executives. The featured businesses come from a variety of sectors, from agri-business to heating and electrical trades. This year, there will be two tours per month during the school year. Besides introducing students to different career options, the hope is to show them that Waseca has plenty of job opportunities within its borders. Meanwhile, the Fairmont school districts hosts a “Career Day” every year that brings in more than 100 businesses, post-secondary institutions and organizations. This event is open to all students but aimed at sophomores, so they have a chance to learn more about different career opportunities before choosing their electives. While Fairmont hosts the event, students from more than 20 school districts also participate. “It gives the students the opportunity to go physically meet with different companies to help them think about what they want to do when they finish high school,” said district superintendent Joseph Brown. “In this country, we have so many opportunities for our young men and women, and there are no barriers anymore. That’s why it’s so important to have the businesses and colleges and universities come into our community [and meet with students].”
Internships And Apprenticeships While the previous programs are examples of K-12 education opportunities within school limits, some area schools have gone above and beyond to offer students handson learning experiences, forging partnerships with local businesses to offer full-scale internships. In Mankato, District 77 has partnered with EI Microcircuits, Kato Cable and MTU Onsite Energy to offer these interactive experiences through the Youth Employment Acceleration Program 58
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(YEAP). In fact, according to Career & College Readiness Coordinator Kim Mueller, the businesses came to her. “It’s really a training program to get [students] some skills outside of the classroom,” she said. “It’s a totally different way of learning, and it fits kids’ interests. When you can take what you learn in the classroom and apply it in the real world, I think that’s fantastic.” The program began last year and started with four students. Now, 10 are participating. In order to join, students are required to take prerequisite courses during their first two years of high school before starting the two-year YEAP Program. Then, the students can spend part of their school day working at one of the three participating businesses, under the one-on-one supervision of both a mentor and a coach. This time counts for school credit, and students are also paid the minimum wage hourly rate by the businesses. The work continues throughout the students’ summer break, when they often work 40 hours a week, and then into senior year. By the time they finish the program, they have accumulated 2,000 hours of on-the-job experience. While the program is still young, it has already been deemed a great success, with businesses hiring on some of their YEAP students after graduation. Mueller said program organizers are now looking into the possibility of offering employment programs in the fields of health care and agricultural business, as well as finding more partnerships with area businesses. Other programs focus on recent high school graduates in the hopes of keeping them in the area. Martin County started an internship program through a partnership with the Minnesota Valley Action Council, providing funds for businesses to hire
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college-age interns for eight-week summer internship programs. The county supplies the funds to pay students minimum-wage rates. Businesses apply to host these internships, which run 240-260 hours. Students also apply, and businesses have the chance to interview them before accepting them for a position. This year, 32 students and 34 businesses applied to the program. Program coordinator Vicki Paskey said many students have gone through the internship and ended up with job offers afterwards. “I think [Martin County] has been undiscovered for a while, and I think that’s starting to change,” she said. “We are planting seeds.” Tiphanie Olmstead is one student who saw that seed take root and blossom. As an undergraduate at MSU-Mankato, she found an internship at the Workforce Center in Fairmont, where she helped people find jobs. The paid internship allowed her to keep her three other part-time jobs, take summer classes and stay in the area. Eventually, she was hired as a full-time employee at the center, and now she has bought a house and started a family. “I never thought I’d stay in Minnesota, let alone in the small town, rural Minnesota where I grew up,” she said. “This internship did just what it intended to do: showed me the employment opportunities that are available around here, employed me, and ultimately kept me in the area. I owe a lot to the program!” The program has done so well that it recently received the Association of Minnesota Counties’ 2013 Innovation and Excellence Award. These are just some of the opportunities for southern Minnesota students to learn about their career options. (Part III of this continuing series will focus on how efforts are being made to employ veterans.)
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