It wasn't your typical ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Western Technical College campus in La Crosse Tuesday.
To officially open the Wanek Center of Innovation in La Crosse, a robot on wheels carrying a large pair of scissors rolled up to the ribbon and sliced it. The $10 million classroom and lab center was announced about a year ago, to be developed inside an existing campus building.
Western Tech president Roger Stanford says the center is designed to train students in cutting-edge technology. "What's in here, probably won't be what's in here in 10 years," Stanford told reporters. "But if you look at today, when you look at the five types of robots that are inside of this place, this is what's being used right now."
Stanford says the new center will allow Western students to get a head start on high-tech jobs. "If you can go into a lab that has the full simulation of the entire process, and the experience, and that's exactly what our industry is using, that's a completely different learning environment."
The Center of Innovation is named in honor of Ashley Furniture founders Ron and Joyce Wanek of Arcadia, who financed the project with the largest single gift in the history of WTC. Ron Wanek says the innovation center is even better than he had expected. "The attention to detail, the construction of it, the design that was done by the design teams, the Ashley design teams...I say it has a golden touch, all the touches that it has, it's absolutely a great center," said Wanek.
As part of the day's ceremonies, Stanford signed a series of agreements for a student transfer project between WTC and UW-Stout, with Stout Chancellor Katherine Frank also on hand to sign the documents. Frank says the new center at Western is "a testament to innovation."