Old Roads, New Routes
By Michael Lambert
For one hundred years, UW-Platteville has been educating and preparing engineers for the demands of the workforce. Building highways and bridges, manufacturing lines and electrical systems, and carrying their degrees into careers across the state of Wisconsin and beyond. In this 100-year-themed issue, the Geode offers a look back at the history that helped bring the school into the present moment. It also offers us a moment to look at what lies in our path ahead and ask: who are the engineers of the next hundred years?
That question lies at the heart of an initiative quietly reshaping how students in Wisconsin access a four-year engineering degree.
UW-Platteville's Engineering Partnership Program—known as PEP—has been building transfer pathways between UW-Platteville and schools across Wisconsin since the 1980s. The PEP program allows students to start their educational journey at a two-year institution, then transfer into one of three accredited bachelor’s degree programs: mechanical, electrical, or industrial and systems engineering. Since 2020, PEP has been building these transfer pathways strategically with Wisconsin’s technical colleges. The most recent additions to PEP’s growing network is Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and Northcentral Technical College, whose newly signed articulation agreements formalize a clear, affordable route for students in the Green Bay region to earn a degree from UW-Platteville without ever needing to leave Northern Wisconsin.
Melissa Gavin, director, distance engineering programs, coordinates UW-Platteville’s engineering partnerships and has spent the last several years revitalizing the PEP program. When she stepped into the role in 2022, she inherited a partnership map that listed nearly every institution in the state only to learn that just a small number were true partners. To help clarify and redefine the roles of those partners, she began meeting with partners twice a year.
“That was the beginning of our PEP partnership meetings,” she said. “Those meetings became a place to surface common challenges, share course rotational needs, and develop new ideas to support students.” Partner campuses rotate as hosts, giving each institution a chance to show what they bring to the collaboration.
Often, students follow a traditional educational pathway: high school, university, degree. Many of today’s prospective engineers take a different route, however. Wisconsin technical colleges now serve much of the population that the Universities of Wisconsin's two-year campuses previously reached: students who have families, full-time jobs, and other barriers to the more traditional four-year route.
“From a student perspective, we are offering an opportunity to those who may never have thought about a four-year degree in engineering or UW-Platteville,” Gavin said. “The technical colleges often attract nontraditional and place-bound students who would not be able to move to Platteville.”
PEP meets these students where they are. Through dual enrollment, a student can begin taking UW-Platteville engineering courses while still finishing their associate degree and having the support of academic advising from both institutions simultaneously. For roughly 75-percent of students who ultimately transfer, the destination is still UW-Platteville.
Within the larger context of Wisconsin’s high school graduating classes shrinking, the state of Wisconsin still needs engineers. UW-Platteville, with its century of engineering education and history, is positioned to help fill that gap. PEP’s partnership network now includes eight defined partners across the state, with more in development.
The engineers of the next century may not all come through UW-Platteville the way earlier generations did. Some might start in Green Bay, Rhinelander, or Janesville, taking night classes while working a full-time job. They might arrive at the destination of their degree with a different path, but they will arrive. And the foundations that are being built today are what will make that possible.