The best time of the year

This month will be the greatest time of the year for us.

It’s when we hold a number of graduation and completion events, including our graduation commencement ceremony. It’s a time of tears and triumph, endings and beginnings, and lives changed. It’s a time to celebrate the dedication and commitment by many of our students to achieve their lifelong goal of obtaining a college degree.

No matter what path they take, their lives will be changed.

­­­­Our graduates and completers will move on to the next stage of their lives, fortified by the skills and confidence they’ve gained through their studies at Gateway. Many are going directly into the workforce, helped by that Gateway degree. Others may have decided they’ll go on to gain more education, transferring their credits to one of many colleges with which we’ve partnered. They very well might do both – enter the workforce, and use their career earnings to help pay for an additional degree.

Any way you look at it, we are proud of our graduates. They’ve changed their own lives through hard work and a willingness to face the challenge of obtaining a diploma or degree.

Thank you for choosing Gateway to do so.

Gateway receives Top Employer Award -- again

Gateway Technical College again has been named one of the top places to work among large employers in southeastern Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Top Workplaces 2019 list.

Gateway ranked 22nd in the large company category of businesses with 500 employees or more, as it employs 610. This is the tenth year of the survey, and Gateway was named among the top in that category for nine of those years, three times in the top 10.

The list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by research partner Energage, LLC. The anonymous survey measures several aspects of workplace culture, including alignment, execution and connection, to name a few.

Students take part in study abroad program

A group of 24 Gateway students and staff left April 26 to study abroad, visiting Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic as part of global enrichment program through the college.

The group will visit many different sites, including colleges, the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross. Students gain valuable experience they can use in their future careers and in their personal lives. The college also offers a study abroad program where students from specific Gateway programs can take what they've learned in the classroom and apply it to a specific project or to help others in another country.

“Study Abroad presents a rich platform for intercultural understanding and provides a global context, but it offers unique and transformational learning experience for students,” said Chinedu Obowu, Gateway International Education coordinator. 

“Study abroad programs have also been shown to aid with employability as more and more employers recognize the importance of cross-cultural understanding in today’s ever growing global economic environment.”

Gateway Foundation reaches $3 million Promise goal

Gateway Technical College Foundation has surpassed its Gateway Promise program goal of $3 million, providing a way for students to reach their educational goals for many years into the future, officials announced this week.

“Each of us have a responsibility to improve the lives of others. The Gateway Promise is a commitment our community has made in youth for generations – the promise of an affordable path to a college degree through Gateway Technical College,” said Gateway Technical College President and CEO Bryan Albrecht.

Graduate’s lifelong interest being realized at graduation

Guadalupe Jaramillo has held a lifelong interest in cars.

He played with toy cars as a child, dreaming one day he would work on actual cars as an adult.

“I had that big rug with all the streets on it, you know the one? I used to play with my cars on that. Then I started to go to car shows. I always knew I wanted to have an automotive career,” says Lupe.

Guadalupe joins hundreds of other Gateway students to graduate from the college this month, entering their career and realizing their dreams.

Gateway DECA students part of international event

The Gateway Technical College Collegiate DECA Chapter earned several recognitions at the International College DECA Conference held recently in Orlando, Fla.

Awards won include:

Award of Excellence. The following Gateway students received an award of excellence for placing a high score in their event: David Czuper (Racine), Jada Peters (Kenosha), Taylor Arena (Kenosha), Angelique Ortiz (Kenosha) and Ailyn Castro (Winthrop Harbor, Ill.). 

Gateway honors youth apprentices

Gateway recognized and honored the 39 Gateway Consortium Youth Apprenticeship student completers at a recent Youth Apprenticeship Completion Breakfast.

These students have worked with a mentor at a local company for the past year, applying what they have learned in the classroom on the job. Each student is required to work at least 450 hours this year.

At the breakfast, 30 students from the high schools of Big Foot, Badger, Delavan Darien, Elkhorn and Union Grove attended along with 47 guests, which included parents, employers and mentors.

Nine Gateway apprentice students gain scholarships

Nine Gateway Technical College apprentice students were awarded $1,500 Ascendium Education Group Tools of the Trade scholarships to help them cover out-of-pocket expenses such as tuition, tools and clothing so that they are able to complete their training.

The Gateway apprentices are part of a statewide effort by Ascendium – formerly Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation – to award $298,500 in scholarships to 199 construction and industrial trade apprentices attending Wisconsin Technical College System colleges.

Longtime instructor a winner of Foxconn event

Longtime Gateway Technical College Horticulture instructor Kate Field has been named as one of the 12 winners in the final round of Foxconn’s statewide Smart Cities-Smart Futures competition.

Field, who retired earlier this month, was the only winner among the state’s technical colleges, surviving all three rounds of the Smart Cities competition which began with 355 initial applicants in Round One from two- and four-year institutions from across Wisconsin. She was announced as a winner at an April 25 celebration.

Gateway a flagship college on national educators’ tour

Gateway hosted the National Council on Workforce Education’s New Professionals Academy, a group created to advance knowledge and skill development for community college workforce education professionals who are relatively new to the field of workforce education.

This yearlong professional development program was designed by, and is delivered by, workforce education professionals who have extensive leadership experience in higher education and with community-based organizations. Participants were able to visit two flagship community college workforce development programs and learn lessons they can bring back to their own institutions – and this year, Gateway was chosen as one of those flagship institutions.

A group of 20 visitors from colleges across the country toured the college.