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Communication Campaigns for the Monroe Farmers Market

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:38:41 +0000

Main Street Monroe is a non-stock corporation whose mission is to improve the lives of residents in Monroe, Wisconsin through interactive activities, historic events, restaurants, shopping and most importantly, farmer’s markets. The Monroe Farmers’ Market has its own blog within the Main Street Monroe website, detailing its times, vendors, events, updates, and connected social media accounts. The Farmers’ Market is all year long, moving to an indoor location in the winter. On the blog, special activities and prizes are listed, including kids’ scavenger hunts, vendor product samples, Instagram photo contests, story time with Monroe Public Library and trivia questions for prizes. Here, Monroe Farmers’ Market appeals to a wide range of audiences, from those on social media to parents, to children, to those looking for activities on a weekend.

Delving into one main issue, Monroe’s size and demographics makes it vulnerable to poor communication via social media, local newspapers and other communication sources. Monroe, Wisconsin is a community of 10,827 people with most people being middle-aged, between ages 35-59 years-old. This may be an explanation for why some of those interviewed felt that Monroe

Farmers Market lacked consistent and effective communication. Many interviewees were unsure how they knew about the Monroe Farmers market, thinking they heard about it via word-of-mouth mostly. One interviewee was not from the area and had trouble finding information about the market, even though he knew a Facebook group was available. Focusing on communication methods will be one of the various problems we plan to tackle with this marketing campaign.

The objective of the campaign is to increase regular attendance at the Monroe Farmers’ market, to increase awareness and knowledge of the market, and to improve attitudes towards the market. Additionally, the campaign aims to increase self-efficacy among community members by providing and distributing up-to-date information regarding the market and communicating this information to the community in an effective manner. Lastly, the campaign aims to to increase customer satisfaction with the products, vendors, and market as a whole. The methods of the campaign will include geo-framing to measure attendance by offering incentives to visitors who check in online within the geofence.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info:

UniverCity@wisc.edu

Improving Rural Transportation in Green County

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:38:20 +0000

This project was developed as part of the UniverCity Year, a partnership between the Green County
Economic Development Corporation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Green County Healthy Community Coalition determined that transportation presents a significant
challenge for many residents in Green County in accessing medical care, grocery stores, and other
services. In consultation with RoAnn Warden, Director of the Green County Health Department, and
based on the content of our initial literature review, we decided to present a menu of options focused
on transportation for low-income families. After beginning with broad research on the topic, we
narrowed our work down to three detailed options from which Green County can consider for
implementation. Our intention was to present realistic, affordable options that can reduce inequities in
transportation access. We additionally suggest possible funding sources for each of the options. We
hope this report can assist Green County in selecting an evidence-based community intervention to
improve rural transportation access.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Barbara Duerst
Population Health Sciences

barbara.duerst@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact

Organizational Models for the Monroe Cultural Collaborative

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:52 +0000

The purpose of this project is to identify potential organizational models that the Monroe
Cultural Collaborative (MCC) could emulate for the purpose of more efficient and effective
stewardship of the arts in City of Monroe. For this purpose, we conducted market research on
arts organizations from different parts of the United States based on similar demographics, in
similarly sized communities, and with a similar number and variety of participating
organizations. Based on the results from our market research, we interviewed stakeholders and
key members of arts organizations within MCC to assess the needs of MCC and the feasibility of
various organizational models for MCC.
The report is structured with an executive summary which highlights the top-level key
findings and recommendations, followed by a detailed section on our findings from arts
organizations from our market research, and a detailed section on our findings from interviewing
stakeholders. Each of the section contains an overview about the selected arts organizations and
their organizational structure and operations.
Key findings and recommendations
● Main goal of the formation of MCC is to enhance and facilitate communication in the
Monroe arts community and to engage the local community in the arts.
● Organizations within MCC will need to show commitment in the first year of formation as a
key success factor; clear communication and regular attendance of meetings are crucial for
the success of MCC.
● Rotational leadership and/or steering committee(s) is essential to share responsibilities
among members.
● The consensus is that a shared calendar will be useful; further discussion is needed to discuss
the specifics of the shared calendar by MCC members.
● Volunteers from the high school are highly welcomed by organizations within MCC that
have a shortage of volunteers.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Jennifer Yao
Student Group

jenniferyao037@gmail.com

Local Government / Community Contact
Kathy Hennessy
Monroe Cultural Collaborative
Executive Director of Monroe Arts Center

Pearl Island Recreational Corridor Conservation Plan

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:48 +0000

The Pearl Island Recreational Corridor is an 80-acre recreational property located in
Brodhead, WI, just 10 miles north of the Wisconsin/Illinois border. This community project
began in November 2012 when the property received a matching grant in order to fund
recreational activity enhancement. There are three main ecosystems that were chosen for
conservation biodiversity targets (see Glossary). The site contains a portion of Decatur Lake, the
first biodiversity target, where the project team choose to focus on increasing the water quality of
the lake in order to enhance recreational opportunities such fishing, boating, and kayaking. A
second target of this project site is the Mill Race: a hand dug waterway created in the mid 1800’s
to furnish power for factories and a flour mill in the City of Brodhead. The project team chose to
focus on increasing the riparian buffer zone of the Mill Race in an effort to increase native
vegetation in order to mitigate runoff from nearby residential and agricultural areas, as well as
lessen the severity of flooding. The third and final target of this project is the surrounding
lowland forest area along the Mill Race, which contains several recreational trails with cultural
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significance to the city. This area was once predominately Ash trees, however, the forest area
was recently devastated by the Emerald Ash Borer. This caused a large reduction in tree cover.
The area is also highly susceptible to flooding from the Mill Race due to increased precipitation
caused by climate change. The focus on this target is to create more “water-resilient” trails by
planting trees that can persist in wetter environments as well as replace the Ash trees lost to the
Emerald Ash Borer. With the generation of an Open Standards plan for this project site, the Pearl
Island Recreational Corridor project aims to increase the engagement, restoration, and
management of the composed area in an effort to improve the site as a community recreational
attraction.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Arlyne Johnson
Environmental Studies

ajohns10@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact

Renewable Energy Analysis for New Glarus School District

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:47 +0000

The New Glarus School District desires to operate more sustainably, and has already
made great strides in implementing energy saving methods such as new roofs, energy efficient
lights, and better insulation throughout the past five years. Now, NGSD is ready to switch some
of its energy sources to renewable technologies. Different renewable energy sources were
analyzed for the purposes of supplementing the current energy supply to the school district. It is
necessary that a new system is compatible with the current landscape, and is able to be combined
with other community projects, such as the construction of a new pool, in order to ensure the
town’s support. The largest constraints that impact the scope of the design are budget and land
area. The client gave no preference of the type of design, and only wished that the design be
spatially conservative and fall within a budget of $200,000. Limiting factors also include
environmental variables, such as the soil type or the average amount of sunlight and wind the
area receives.
The design process consisted of brainstorming efforts followed by evaluation,
categorization, and research into chosen topics. After an initial analysis, options were once again
evaluated and categorized based on the potential of groups of ideas to reach the energy goal.
Although there were a multitude of brainstormed ideas, notable options which were originally
researched include solar hot water, geothermal, solar photovoltaic, renewable energy credits and
power purchase agreements. Solar hot water was omitted for the reason that the school buildings
do not use a substantial amount of water throughout the day, and therefore the resulting energy
savings would be insignificant and not worth the installation cost for the system. Geothermal,
while logistically viable, was disqualified because there were too many unknowns to proceed
forward without spending thousands of dollars just to assess feasibility. It was an option that was
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better suited for a customer who knew that they wanted to pursue geothermal as a preferred
energy solution, not a curiosity-based inquiry into sustainable design. Eventually, a rooftop solar
photovoltaic system was chosen, as it would best fit the constraints of the client by leaving space
available for parking and further landscape development projects.
The final design provided options for different tiers of commitment for several system
sizes, because of the presently unknown public and committee responses in New Glarus. Three
system sizes were explored for the New Glarus Secondary School rooftop. Financing options
include school district funding, available cash grants from the state and utility, or a public-private
partnership. A public-private partnership would involve third party funding and ownership of the
panels, but would guarantee the building of a system large enough to cover the energy needs of
the school district. Otherwise, the district could finance the project and build a smaller system
within the allotted budget, which could be scaled up yearly as desired. If the latter method is
chosen, it is possible to enroll in a renewable energy credit purchase through WPPI, which would
ensure that the energy purchased by the school district is sourced from off site renewable energy
systems. Power provided from a 250 kW solar photovoltaic system would provide approximately
70% of the school district’s energy load, compared to a small system (10kW) which would
provide around 3%. The cost for these designs would be approximately $682,000 and $32,000
respectively, with multiple financing options presented to the district.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Scott Williams
Civil and Environmental Engineering

spwilliams@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Scott Anderson

Teacher at Juda School

Highland Cemetery Records Management Instructions and GIS Data

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:36 +0000

The idea behind this documentation is to help provide an easier way to manage burial
records, specifically with which graves are unused, where each grave is located, and other
information about the person if the plot is used. The hope was to help to move away from paper
data and make the storage of this information easier.
This document should help walk through getting started with a free, open-source GIS
program called QGIS, specifically to manage the dataset we have created.
If any in depth questions arise visit here for the official QGIS training documentation.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Bill Gartner
Geography

william.gartner@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Kevin Komprood

Public Works Director

Responding to Requests for Proposals

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:35 +0000

The goal of this project was to aid Green County Development Corporation (GCDC) in bringing
new businesses to Green County. In order to do so, we sought to assist GCDC in their efforts to
respond to businesses who are interesting in locating in Wisconsin. Our work led to the creation
of two deliverables for GCDC. They will be used by GCDC when responding to Requests for
Proposals that are released by business site selectors interesting in locating in the region. After
analyzing seven Request for Proposals (RFPs) from GCDC, we established 11 categories to focus
our data collection efforts on. Our data collection process consisted of document analysis and
stakeholder interviews. Using our data collection, we identified which characteristics to
emphasize and what to deemphasize regarding Green County. For aspects to emphasize, we
recommend the County focus on its robust manufacturing, agribusiness, and food processing
industries, strong quality of life metrics and optimistic prospects for future growth. With that
said, we recommend GCDC place a positive spin on its current land-use pattern, and lack of
interstate transportation access.
We created a database that includes all data that is commonly requested in RFPs. We then used
the data within our database to create the marketing document.
First, this report will provide an introduction of our work and Green County as a whole. Next, we
will go in to detail about the methodology of our work. Third, we will move to discuss the data
collection process. Next, we discuss the contents of our deliverables, and conclude with a section
on implementation.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Bryan Gadow
Urban and Regional Planning

bgadow@newglarusvillage.com

Local Government / Community Contact
Bryan Gadow
Development Corporation
City Administrator
bgadow@newglarusvillage.com

Improving Energy Efficiency at Juda School

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:31 +0000

The following document describes a project undertaken in conjunction with the
UniverCity Year in which we, a group of 4 UW-Madison students, worked with the Juda School
in order to improve their energy efficiency. Juda is a K through 12 school located in southern WI
that is seeking to be more sustainable, an effort led by Juda educator Scott Anderson. While Juda
has taken many steps toward sustainability, including installing a 7.5kW solar array, there is
room for improvement, and finding that “room” as economically and efficiently as possible was
the main objective of this venture. Our client, Scott, specifically requested that we aim for the
“low-hanging fruit” solutions–that is the cheapest possible solutions that would make an impact.
We determined that any energy-idea that we recommended to Juda would have to be practical,
economical, and politically feasible given that any major changes made at Juda would require
district approval. Ultimately we have come up with a list of 10 possible solutions that, if
implemented, will save Juda energy and money.
Proposed solutions fall into two categories: behavioral and structural. Behavioral
solutions were heavily emphasized as they are very inexpensive compared to their structural
counterparts. Additionally, Scott expressed a desire to begin cultural change at Juda in regards to
sustainability, as, in his opinion, school-wide energy saving behaviors were severely lacking. In
this spirit, two behavioral solutions are aimed at instigating long term change at Juda. The first is
the Cool Choices program which uses friendly competition and an interactive game to instill
good habits in staff and students that will continue to save energy even after the game ends. The
second is to institute stickers above every light switch that gently remind the last person to leave
a room to turn off the light. These slight changes in behavior save a surprising amount of energy.
The other behavioral solutions are one-time changes that will save energy moving forward,
including lowering sleep settings on school computers and other electronics and using smart
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power strips to eliminate phantom energy consumption when teacher workstations are not in use.
All of these behavioral solutions cost very little–two are even free–thus demonstrating the
benefit of this type of intervention.
The portion of our recommendations with the biggest energy saving potential, as well as
the biggest budget, are the structural solutions. The benefit of these solutions, in addition to the
obvious advantage of saving large quantities of energy, is that once they are implemented, they
require little further effort: all 6 structural solutions have a lifetime of at least 10 years. These
solutions include external building improvements, such as roof coating and window insulation,
as well as modifications of current Juda systems, such as HVAC insulation and modification of
occupancy sensor time reductions. Some of the most impactful solutions, however, involve the
addition of new appliances including replacing the remainder of Juda’s non-LED lights with
LEDs and installing occupancy sensors in the rooms that currently lack them. Though some of
these solutions have a high price tag, the benefits they return outweigh the initial cost, with
payback periods within the lifetime of the product. Included in this report is one solution, the
installation of smart thermostats, that is not currently feasible at Juda, but has been included for
potential future application if the opportunity should arise.
The combination of all of these proposed solutions could reduce Juda’s energy
consumption, taking both electricity and gas into account, by 8.5 percent. Considering in the last
year Juda consumed over 2,365,000 kWh, this is a significant improvement. We hope that Juda
can use these solutions going forward in their pursuit of sustainability.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Scott Williams
Civil and Environmental Engineering

spwilliams@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Scott Anderson

Teacher at Juda School

Broadhead Marketing Analysis: Business Inventory and Research

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:20 +0000

The City of Brodhead set out to begin a study of its local market.
Some reasons for the analysis include:
• Several vacancies in downtown.
• A more measured growth rate.
• Understanding of how Brodhead is doing overall.
Brodhead is pursuing a market analysis to better understand the retail, service, and business
needs of the community, as well as its needs for residents and visitors. The entirety of Green
County will be taken into consideration in other parts of the UniverCity Year program. However,
the focus of this study will be on the retail and service business sectors of Brodhead and its
surrounding trade area. The market analysis will be used to assess potential business
development opportunities, effective promotional branding of the community, and to generally
understand the types of business development that will contribute to the quality of life in this
community.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Bryan Gadow
Urban and Regional Planning

bgadow@newglarusvillage.com

Local Government / Community Contact
Bryan Gadow
City of Brodhead
City Administrator
bgadow@newglarusvillage.com

Opioid Use Disorder Treatment in Pregnancy: A Program for Green County

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:36:46 +0000

Similar to state and national trends, evidence in Green County, Wisconsin suggests that
there is an increase in opioid use within the pregnant population leading to opioid use disorder
(OUD). Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is a recommended best practice for the care of
pregnant women to stop and prevent opioid withdrawal and improve infant and maternal
outcomes (SAMHSA, 2014). Significant barriers to MAT are noted in Green County as there are
a total of two prescribing providers in the area and neither provide services to pregnant
women. Mothers who are enrolled in MAT are forced to receive care 35-45 miles outside of
Green County in Beloit or Madison, Wisconsin. Further transportation demands and financial
constraints put patients at risk for missed doses, relapse, and drug overdose. To increase access
to MAT, our goal is to increase the number of prescribing physicians in Green County by
providing education on evidence-based interventions for OUD, outlining the MAT certification
process, and providing information on disparities within the county.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

UniverCity Year Contact Info
Gavin Luter
Managing Director
gavin@cows.org
608-261-1141

University Faculty Contact
Barbara Duerst
Population Health Sciences

barbara.duerst@wisc.edu

Local Government / Community Contact