St. Norbert’s Ripple Effect

A private college in northeastern Wisconsin is releasing new economic impact data.St. Norbert College, just outside of Green Bay, says its relatively small staff and student body contribute millions of dollars to the local economy.

Twenty-two hundred students attend St. Norbert College in De Pere.The school employs 615 people.Sandra Odorzynski is a professor of economics at St. Norbert.In conjunction with the school’s Stragetic Research Institute she crunched the yearly numbers.

“Our total economic impact is 121-and-a-half million dollars.And that eminates from an operating budget of about 60 million.So these ripple effects are very strong and span out in those regards.”

Odorzynski says recent campus building projects created 79 jobs.Plus the study took into account student’s volunteer activities and private jobs in the neighborhood.

“Basically for every job St. Norbert creates, about another point six jobs was created in the local community.So that spillover, that ripple effect is point six for every job we create.”

The study focused on Brown County, including Green Bay and De Pere.This is St. Norbert’s first economic impact report since the mid nineties.Odorzynski did not compare the school’s monetary footprint with similar schools, though she says follow-ups are planned every other year.