College Invites Lawmakers to Tour Outdated Building

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One of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate candidates toured an outdated science building on the campus of St. Norbert College in De Pere Monday. Democratic candidate Tammy Baldwin says the government should do what it can to help schools prepare their students for high tech jobs.

St. Norbert is ready to embark on a $40 million project to gut, renovate and expand its circa-1968 science building. The work will come too late for incoming senior Louis Ayensu-Mensah, who once had a chemistry experiment compromised by a plumbing issue in a lab. “Most of the things we did were water sensitive, and we had some leaky faucets. They were clearing the pipes or something, and one was just running because we were out to lunch when they turned it back on,” Ayensu-Mensah said.

Ayensu-Mensah was one of four St. Norbert students who met with Representative Tammy Baldwin. Baldwin is running for Senate against former Governor Tommy Thompson. According to Baldwin, when the project is finished, it will help the school attract students and get them job-ready in the growing science fields. She said, “I think anyone who believes that education is the key to our economic growth needs to be focused on how we out educate the rest of the world.”

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Most of St. Norbert’s new building will be privately funded, but President Thomas Kunkel says he is inviting any Wisconsin lawmaker to come see the need for improvements. “We are looking at the possibility of maybe some federal funds that have already been appropriated that are in the agencies and are intended with projects like this. So we are working with the Wisconsin delegation to see if we can’t get some of those funds.”

St. Norbert hopes to break ground on the project next spring.