Pioneers of 2008

Four groundbreaking developments changing the face of their respective industries across the region

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

IN SPITE OF ALL THE DEPRESSING ECONOMIC NEWS to come out of 2008, there were a number of illuminating, innovative developments that highlighted what might otherwise have been a dismal year.

Among all the new businesses, agencies and programs that were inaugurated during the past year, B2B has recognized a small handful of instigators of change as our Pioneers of 2008.

These initiatives have gone about shifting paradigms, working outside the box of conventional day-to-day rigor, and have brought a new way of thinking to northeast Wisconsin. Ultimately, we believe the impact of these pioneering efforts will help pave the way to a brighter future in our area.

So without any further delay, we bring you our B2B Pioneers of 2008.

Marian University
THE FORMER MARIAN COLLEGE has an extensive track record of pioneering developments in education. The institute of higher learning was established 72 years ago in Fond du Lac to allow the Sisters of St. Agnes access to education and nursing degrees. The school has provided adult, nontraditional student outreach at off-campus sites for more than 20 years, and was among the first in Wisconsin to offer a masters degree in education – and eventually a doctorate degree – to excelling teachers across the state.

“We have responded to the needs of the market as it’s evolved,” said Daniel Maloney, provost of Marian.

After a few years of essentially functioning and being structurally aligned as a university, Marian took the final steps this past year in fully transitioning to a university. Marian established seven separate schools of study – each headed by a dean. It offers more than 40 different majors for undergraduate students, and seven areas of master’s degree studies. Marian now includes alumni with doctorates among its ranks, with the first cohort of its Ph.D. program in leadership having graduated this past May. Students matriculating last May and December – and all those going forward – receive diplomas reading “Marian University.”

“Really what we have done is calling ourselves what we have become,” said Provost Maloney. “What it reflects is this is a mighty little institution, but it’s been scrappy – it’s gotten through tough times when the economy has been down, and has emerged into a thriving community.”

Perhaps one of the greatest anticipated assets accompanying the transition to a university will be enhancing the image of Marian on an international scale. Maloney explained that in many industrialized countries outside the U.S., the term “college” translates to an education level akin to what we consider as high school. Maloney and the rest of the Marian community believe the “university” moniker can help attract more international students.

“It looks better, and it sells students’ credentials better,” Maloney said.

This coming year, Marian University is enhancing its commitment to the greater Fox Valley by purchasing a building and developing a larger, more extensive satellite campus in Appleton. Marian has leased space in a strip mall in Appleton for more than a decade, but the new location near the U.S. Highway 41 interchange with Richmond Street will offer students more of a university identity, as well as increase the number of classrooms available to students from six to 13. It’s expected to open late this summer, Maloney said.

As Marian grows, the school hasn’t lost sight of its intimate, liberal arts roots.

“We’ve grown more complex,” Maloney said, “But we’re very mindful of the concept of being a place where you’re not going to be in large classes.”

Economic Development Associates
AGENCIES CONDUCTING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT activities are often established by municipal or county government. Sometimes they’re even created through business development associations like chambers of commerce.
So it’s no surprise that often such economic development associations are bound by the geographic borders that their organizing entity supports.

Regional economies, though – as tangible, ever-morphing bodies of commercial, industrial and workforce wealth – don’t always subscribe to political boundaries.

It’s with that recognition that Economic Development Associates was borne out of in the first half of 2008. The idea hatched during a luncheon meeting earlier in 2008 with New North founding board member Kathi Seifert, Consolidated Construction Corp. executive vice president Mark Schwei and Doug Pearson, an economic development professional with a 30-year track record of growing jobs and property tax base for the communities he’d served.

The discussion at hand at the time was how to create a regional spec building program for attracting industry, a resume attribute Pearson had polished during his previous 13 years with Chamco Inc., the industrial development agency for the Oshkosh area.

Seifert and Schwei had probed Chamco about taking its successful spec building program on the road, but Chamco – chartered to serve Oshkosh and neighboring communities in Winnebago County – wasn’t in a position to expand its role to a larger region.

Pearson was already transitioning out of his role with Chamco, and the idea sparked his interest as well. So with Schwei’s help, Economic Development Associates debuted in northeast Wisconsin this past May as a subsidiary of Consolidated Construction.

Among the greatest surprises since the organization launched has been the clout it’s been given in site selection circles.

“There, we have seen seven firms that have secured us to do site searches,” Pearson said, indicating there’s been inquiries from Maine to the West Coast, though the bulk have focused in Wisconsin. Pearson said the organization is putting the final touches on a deal with a manufacturer planning to construct a $20 million industrial facility in northeast Wisconsin, as well as a national retail chain looking to develop 12 big-box stores across the state. The identity of both companies remains under wrap until the developers move past confidential contingencies in the process.

Back to its original intent, Economic Development Associates has also been hired out by other more traditional economic development organizations to consult on strategies for growing successful spec building programs.

In one northeastern Wisconsin community – which Pearson is keeping confidential until the shovels are in the dirt – a groundbreaking collaboration between the municipality, the local economic development corporation, a commercial realtor, Consolidated Construction and Pearson’s organization is putting the wheels in motion for two industrial spec buildings, one at 40,000 sq. ft. and the other at 60,000 sq. ft. The projects should be underway by spring, Pearson said.

Not shying away from more traditional economic development activities, Economic Development Associates has worked – often hand-in-hand with local EDCs – to craft customized packages of public and private-sector financing assistance for new projects. Pearson cited a paper converting company interested in building a $2.5 million facility in a rural northeast Wisconsin community that could create as many as 25 to 30 jobs once completed. Economic Development Associates is working with the municipality to create a $425,000 TIF-funded development assistance grant, applying for a local $50,000 site improvement grant, and is applying for a package of industrial revenue bonds.

All of these projects have been unique in that municipal and county boundaries have held little relevance to the assistance that Economic Development Associates has been able to provide. And that has the potential to grow jobs, property tax base and the economy throughout the region.

“The key is probably the fact that EDA is the unfettered advocate for the client,” Pearson said.

U.S. Oil Open for Basic Needs
COMBINED LOCKS-BASED U.S. OIL INC. has an extensive history of community philanthropy.

The three-generation, family-owned company takes a good deal of pride in having set up the very first fund at the Community Foundation of the Fox Valley Region after it was established in 1986. Since that time, U.S. Oil – familiar to most in the region by the more than 30 Express Convenience Centers the company operates – has set up individual funds that support diabetes and Alzheimer’s research, as well as support needy children in the community. Proceeds from a popular golf outing the company stages each August seed the charitable dollars.

Two decades into running a golf outing and becoming rather proficient at philanthropy, the Schmidt family that owns U.S. Oil took a step back to evaluate the goals of its giving. When the 2006 Leading Indicators For Excellence, or LIFE, report for the Fox Cities was unveiled, family leaders analyzed the results to better identify the greatest needs of the community, said Sarah Schmidt, family president and director for U.S. Oil Inc.

“In 2006 we really saw a lot of indicators in the Valley that basic needs issues were becoming quite a crisis,” Schmidt said.

Indeed, the Fox Cities and other northeast Wisconsin communities would soon discover the gap was growing between the number of local residents struggling to access affordable food, shelter and clothing.

In 2007 the Schmidt family decided it would roll each of its three existing funds together into one fund directed specifically toward collaborative initiatives to support basic needs in the community. Proceeds from that 2007 golf outing were the first additions to the newly established Basic Needs Fund.

This past spring of 2008, the first grants were made from the fund, both in the Fox Cities and in the Green Bay area. Later in 2008 – through the persuasion of the J.J. Keller Foundation – the Basic Needs Fund was extended to the Oshkosh area as well, with the first grants to Oshkosh expected in early 2009.

“Our whole goal is to demonstrate over time that we can make a dent in poverty in the community,” Schmidt said. “Big change takes time.”

Each year, proceeds from the golf outing are distributed to individual basic needs funds housed at community foundations in Green Bay, Oshkosh and the Fox Cities. The foundations disperse 10 percent of the fund’s annual balance to local non-profit organizations supporting basic needs issues. The Neenah-based J.J. Keller Foundation also agreed to partner with the fund and match the amount the community foundations in Oshkosh and the Fox Valley disperse each year.

Combined, this generous partnership expects to make grants of nearly $3 million during 2008 and 2009 to help support basic needs across the region.

That hopefully will prove to make quite a dent in poverty locally.

In 2009, Schmidt said the family expects its 23-year-old golf outing will top the $10 million mark in funds raised since its inception. U.S. Oil pays all the expenses of the outing, meaning 100 percent of the funds raised from the event go directly toward the Basic Needs Fund.

FVTC Power Plant Program Collaborative
LABOR STUDY REPORTS from various communities across northeast Wisconsin indicate an impending worker shortage in a number of industries. Few industries, though, expect as quick a wave of retirements as in the energy utility field.

And there’s very few trained workers – and even fewer training opportunities – to replace that talent once it’s lost.

Beginning in late 2008, Fox Valley Technical College launched newly developed power plant and process plant technology programs, an initiative that was a joint venture with Bismarck State College in North Dakota. Each of the two separate programs allow students to work toward an associate degree in computer control engineering technology. About half of the courses are available online through Bismarck State, which was designated by the U.S. Department of Energy as the National Power Plant Operations Technology and Education Center. The remaining courses are held right at FVTC.

The goal of the program is to ramp up the technical knowledge of a starting power plant operator at a time when substantial institutional knowledge will be lost from 25- and 30-year veterans of the industry looking to retire in the next five to 10 years, said Steve Dreger, a key account manager with the Business & Industry Services division at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. Dreger, himself a former 19-year employee for an investor-owned energy utility in western Wisconsin, has witnessed the demographic make-up of the energy industry first hand.

“The average age in the utility industry is about ten years older than the average population, so the Baby Boomer retirement wave will be hitting the utility industry much sooner (than the rest of the workforce),” Dreger said.

According to the state Public Service Commission’s Strategic Energy Assessment 2012 – a report completed in 2007 – an estimated 700 highly skilled workers are expected to retire from Wisconsin utilities by 2010, and more than 1,300 will retire by 2015. These skilled workers at energy utilities generally have been at their jobs longer than the average tenure within other industries, and on average, these employees represent nearly half of the industry’s knowledge assets.

Generally, an entry level power plant employee will come on the job and start out as a screen operator, then an equipment operator, then move up to a boiler helper, said Howard Giesler, assistant vice president of energy supply with WPS Corp. and general manager for its Pulliam electrical generating plant in Green Bay, where the average age of its employees is 48 years old. Giesler said it can take 10 to 15 years on the job to refine the skills necessary for some of the plant’s most technical jobs.

“You just can’t take 15 years to train an apprentice and get them up to speed,” said Mike Nickeson, talent acquisition manager for Alliant Energy. “You need to have them come in with at least the basic skills and basic knowledge.”

FVTC’s new power plant operations programs promise to provide its graduating students with the skills and knowledge necessary to exit the classroom and almost find immediate employment within the industry. And the compensation is quite attractive to lure new talent into the field. The starting wage for a power plant technician at an investor-owned utility is between $19 to $22 an hour, Dreger reported. Experienced employees at a power plant can earn as much as $33 an hour.

With hundreds of manufacturing layoffs raining down on the region as the economy turns south, Dreger said the power plant operator program through FVTC can prove to be a golden opportunity for displaced workers.

“This is a hot industry to be in right now,” he said.