They Are the Champions

Talk about a dream team! In its inaugural year, the high school varsity robotics squad from Becker High School not only won the Minnesota State High School League Championship, but also traveled to compete in a national tournament in St. Louis.

A relatively new "varsity sport of the mind," robotics combines the thrill of competition with the kinds of tech-savvy skills needed in today's workplace. Embracing this activity at the high school level is a way for towns across central Minnesota and beyond to create relationships between students and local businesses that will hopefully translate to a better prepared future workforce.

To learn more about robotics and the Becker team's success story, check out this article in our most recent issue of IQ.

VIVID: Global citizens form a new palette for business in central Minnesota

Signs of central Minnesota's increasingly diverse community are everywhere, from the Latino-owned businesses that have given new life to Long Prairie's main streets to the Halal grocery stores that now serve St. Cloud's Muslim shoppers. In fact, immigrants from Mexico and dozens of other countries have such a profound economic impact that if they were removed from the labor force, one estimate says the state would lost more than 24,000 permanent jobs and $1.2 billion in personal income.

IQ's new cover story by Laura Billings Coleman takes a look at the changing face of central Minnesota and the new opportunities for businesses and the region's economic development.