 From Wisconsin Indian Head Technical College, Logan Smith. I'm the last one, everybody. My name is Logan Smith. As said before, I am the WITC, Shorter. I represent the largest technical college system with four campuses I represent as the ambassador. I'd like to shorten it with WITC. Makes it easier on everybody. I am enrolled in the Associate's Degree Program for Architectural Commercial Design at WITC. I chose that program because at an early age, I found myself sketching a lot when I was younger. A lot of buildings. I find myself going into really nice buildings like this and nerding out at some of the ceiling and at some of the columns here. I learned from an early on stage in my young adult life that I wanted to be an architect or something close and have some aspect and foot in construction. And so growing up through high school, I kind of set my focus on that. A little bit about my high school and my hometown, I come from Glenwood City, Wisconsin. It is a very small town in the farmlands of Midwestern Wisconsin of about 1,200 people. My graduating class size was 39 people. Two of them dropped out. So on stage, we walked with 37 people in total. Coming from a small school, we didn't have a lot of opportunities as a lot of the D2s, D1 schools in the area that are within all 15-minute drive. We are necessarily forgotten about by other college visits and technical college systems. However, we have one awesome technical college system, roughly 15 minutes from us. And we have CVTC, about 40-minute drive from us. We had a very lacking education system in our high school. That is understandable for its size. I did my best and thrived as a scholar in the high school, lettering all four years of high school. I also became very active in the construction and technical education classes that were offered at my high school. I became a very accomplished welder and more so a very accomplished construction builder with light construction as a highlight. I thought that was very interesting at the time. Until one day, I cannot remember, but a technical college promoter came. I believe it was Globe University or CVTC that just so happened to show us in the technical education program an architectural-related field of career choices that you could go into. From that point on, I realized that not only my dreams could be met as a career path as I'm getting older, and I could also stay in construction to something that I'm very passionate about. I immediately, about my senior year, went and applied at CVTC. I was accepted almost immediately as a pre-programmed student. The program that I was in was very popular at the time and still remains very popular today. Upon graduation, we were either given a path, either join a four-year technical school or a four-year university or join the military or join your family as a farmer. I wanted to basically break that mold and set myself apart from other people in my class. So in the fall of 2015, I enrolled at CVTC and became a student. I, at this time, was working full-time at Anderson Windows, which was a short drive from school. I, coming from a very poor family, much like others from Glenwood City, I was able to work and I discovered that money is really nice. I became very active at work and started taking on hours that I couldn't potentially handle and go to school for full-time. Being that I was pre-programmed, I kind of let work started taking over. I let it start kind of getting the best of me. I felt that supply chain management path was probably another interest that I had. I had the unique opportunity of working my way up all the way through 2015 in a full school year and through the entire year of 2016 with the company. In late 2017, where we were made aware that a possible position was opening up in a brand new facility down south in Douglasville, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia. I was selected from 75 other candidates in the warehouse due to my strong work ethics to go down and train culturally diverse communities, such as Mexican-Americans, immigrants. We had Somalia immigrants. Coming from a small community, I was very shocked to see all this diversity. When I was down there, I found myself often bragging about how wonderful my schooling was and I truly did enjoy it. Many of the times, the workers asked me, what the heck am I doing in a supply chain management warehouse position if I love architecture so much? At the end of this day, for about a month and a half, I was down there. I met with the OM and I asked, what do you see myself in? He, as well as others, said that I could finally reach my goal and be happy with not just making money, but truly find my passion by going back to school and staying with the architectural program that I originally applied for. About a year later, I finally took that to heart and left Anderson Windows and I was pretty much on the options table for anything that was open. I do plan on getting my bachelor's degree, so I started thinking about four-year schools again. I realized that I'm from a small town and I think a lot of the things that distracted me at CVTC was the size. For somebody that has been in the area for a long time, a place like Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is not too big. When I went and visited New Richmond, which is my home campus for WITC, I was just walking around the campus exploring. It was brand new and renovated. It was beautiful. I then bumped elbows in the summer of 2018 with a man named Steven Duss. This man is about six-two. I looked up to the man and then right now I look up to the man. I can attribute my going to school to WITC to Steven Duss. Immediately after meeting him, he asked me what my name was, as well as other faculty members. This was around the registration time for school, roughly a month before schooling was to start in August. I, as well as other kids at the school, weren't forgotten about. He miraculously remembered my name as well as other students throughout the campus and I knew immediately that it felt just like home. I wanted to go to school where somebody knew me as me and not just another number in the school system. I felt that the class sizes at the Tech College were small enough to where I could get direct engagement with the instructors and the students within the classes that I was taking. I've had a lot of success there throughout the last eight and a half months now as we start to end my first year at WITC. I can say that I have made plenty of connections throughout the last six and a half months with all these new ambassador opportunities that come forth to me. At my college, students have a support network that isn't found at universities and I think that you can see a pattern here throughout the other ambassadors tonight and I think you can probably relate to that yourselves. That you're not just some person. I believe that my success as well as other students' success in the industry and at school is attributed to the wonderful faculty found on all these technical colleges campuses. It has set me up right now for a wonderful career path that I'm going to hopefully get a wonderful internship in Eau Claire at River Valley Architects. I'm going to be applying there religiously throughout the next couple months. I want to work there. Some of my goals in life as I start to approach the summer here. I mentioned that I want to try to get internships wherever it may lead to build in the Chippewa Valley area or into the Minnesota area. However, I do want to be a contributing member to my state and it takes great pride to say that I do want to stay within my hometown area. It is under immense growth and opportunity. I do want to grow with a company that partakes me as an individual and a contributor to their company. With the Chippewa Valley area, you see a lot of growth and construction. My trades that I am in right now, especially with my program, is a lacking industry. A lot of the construction industry is very much so derelict. There's not a lot of people doing it. I would like to open up my own design build firm within the next five to 10 years or more, however long it may take me, and continue to grow the area and employing other students within the technical college system to come work for me. Another future goal that I would like to have is to get my architect's license within three to five years, but that comes with experience. As I round out this speech here, I would like to thank the donors back at home for giving me scholarship opportunities that I may have been aware of. I would like to thank Derek Construction for giving me a generous scholarship that I received last week. I'm gonna be very happy to apply that for my next semester. I would also like to thank my father, Mark Smith. Because of his veteran background in the Air Force, I am able to have the unique opportunity to have my schooling paid for because of the Wisconsin GI Bill. Coming from a poor family of both a twin brother and a sister, it is very hard to support three growing adults and coming from a single family, for that matter. It is very important for me to make my father happy. I can say that without the GI Bill, that I would not be at the WITC system and that I would be working at some dead-end job and not attributing to my real skill set that I've learned throughout the past week. This event has prepared me for a multitude of things. I've developed skills within the last day and a half that I never even knew I had. The wonderful people that I've got to know all today is outstanding. I can't say enough about them. You guys are all beautiful people. It was great all this afternoon. I would also like to thank the board for setting this all up and everybody behind the scenes setting this event up as well. I can't say enough. And then thank you, David, for keeping in touch with me and communicating. I am in the Richmond, so it is hard to reach the home parent campus of Rice Lake. So good communication skills by your end has helped me through this whole process. I would like to thank everybody for attending tonight and have a great and wonderful evening. If you're driving home, get home safe.