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It's been so great to see familiar faces during our weekly Virtual Breakrooms! We miss seeing everyone in-person... and tasting all your home-cooking at our regular potlucks. Until then, thanks to everyone for pulling the team together virtually!
Please join us in congratulating our second class of Emerging Leader Graduates!! The program kicked off last fall with a full day in Madison with team building and discussions with our C-level and HR team. Since then, graduates worked through rigorous leadership-building activities, including project management, textbook studies, presentations, and monthly meetings - all while still excelling at their usual duties. On October 1st, seven students officially graduated! The ceremony looked different this year, as we met over Teams instead of in-person. However, this group is extremely resilient. Congratulations!
Congrats to the winners of our Work Day BINGO challenge! To reconnect while we're still distanced (or working remotely), we held a fun challenge using the BINGO card shown here. The first five people to send us an email showing 5 in a row on their BINGO card won their pick of several fun office prizes. It was FAST, too - it only took about 20 minutes before we had five winners!
Thank you to all of our staff for your hard work throughout the pandemic! You've stayed the course during this trial, and we've heard a lot of positive feedback from you about every transition we've made together. It's great to know that we can count on you to build others up and "be there" for your clients and for each other even when we're apart. We've received praise from the DHS for measures we're taking to keep people safe, including - requesting that everyone entering an FSC office wears a mask, if they are able, - maintaining social distancing of six feet or more, - plexiglass protective barriers, - sanitizing all surfaces after each meeting, and - clear signage to protect all guests. We're also restricting access to staff and people with appointments at this time. Our team has been great about keeping in touch with participants remotely whenever meeting in-person is not possible. We look forward to thanking you all in-person when this ends.
We just kicked off our second annual Emerging Leaders training! We spent months preparing and recruiting for this internal training. It's an intense course where our staff gets lots of hands-on practice developing their leadership skills. They engage in projects, interactive discussions, and useful homework that incorporates team-building activities into their daily routine. Plus, it's almost exclusively taught by our C-level team, including CEO Marcia, COO Lisa, and our Human Resources Director, Patty. We believe in leading by example, which means our leadership needs to be available and approachable. It was great getting the class together for our first day, and we can't wait to see more from our leaders as we get going!
We've been hitting the road with our Upward Bound classes this summer, taking day trips around WI, overnight trips to Chicago, and even trips to NASA and Denver! They've been packed with college tours, visits to museums and landmarks, and some awesome memories with friends that we'll never forget. We can't wait to welcome new students to our group as we kick off a new school year!
Our Upward Bound instructors learned alongside their students this July during the Summer Science Camp at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Our class engaged with top scientists from the institute and UW-Madison, conducting experiments and participating in lectures on advanced topics like cardiovascular functions and DNA extraction techniques. It was an amazing experience!
Some of our students are enjoying the high life as they complete a high ropes course during the Upward Bound summer program! It promotes good teamwork and camaraderie among the students and staff alike. It also helps us sort out the different personality types in our groups, as some people lead, others coordinate, and some just go for it!
FSC now offers 10 training opportunities to help our team members advance, grow, and stay safe on the job! We also encourage learning with a variety of external e-courses and professional development opportunities. It's a great time to join our team!
We had an AMAZING day of professional development and enjoying time with our coworkers at our Annual Conference! You could feel the excitement in the room as things got started, and it only got more exhilarating as the day went on. Everyone also got a fun gift this year - YETI ramblers with the FSC logo - which they held up for a panoramic so you can see how big we've gotten! Our keynote speaker was Dr. Stan Andrisse, adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine and Executive Director of From Prison Cells to PhD. Hearing his story had us in tears at some points and at others we were laughing and motivated to change the world. He reminded us that everyone has dreams, talents, and values worth pursuing and encouraged us to continue our amazing work in the community. Thank you to everyone involved in this tremendous event!
