Making connections with our local community is important to our team for several reasons. Strong relationships with other local organizations allow us to grow both internally and externally through the attraction of potential employees or customers. In this post, our President, Doug Haynes, discusses one of these new relationships our team is nourishing with South Central College.

Building a Partnership

“We recently had the opportunity to attend a few of the Graphic Communications classes at South Central College as we work to build a partnership with this department for placing their students into the printing field. Gale Bigbee and Helen Bednar, the faculty members for this degree, were very giving of their time with us, and they also came to tour our facility to gain a better understanding of our staffing needs and to learn more about our future growth plans.

The Graphic Communications program at SCC is well structured, and we were glad to see an actual offset press in the classroom as this is a machine we use at Mankato Packaging! It was also refreshing to hear the mix of students was about 50/50 for design and production. We were lucky enough to meet a few of the students in class on the day we toured and view some of the projects they are working on. I am sure we put the students on the spot, but they all handled it very well, and it was fun looking over their projects with them.

With in-person restrictions still in effect, it is difficult to get a real experience of what time in the classroom is like or to see how our company operates at 100%. However, we try our best to make as many connections as we can right now.  We are fortunate to have been invited to attend virtual oversight committee meetings and introductory meetings with the SCC community as this is a great tool to assist us in moving forward with our partnership. The future could hold much promise for this relationship with internships, scholarships, work-study programs, and the like. Being involved at this level with a college literally down the street could have many mutual benefits!

I must say we at Mankato Packaging are very happy to have connected with South Central College.  Gale and Helen have been nothing less than accommodating and are proud of their program and students.  The passion they have makes it easy to build a partnership. We at Mankato Packaging know we will be represented well at the college and we hope the college feels the same because we too have a passion for what we do here.”