When New Glarus leaders began looking at ways to rethink Village Hall, improve Village Park, explore changes at Hoesly’s Pond, and enhance the village’s eastern gateway near the train depot, they turned to an unexpected partner: college students.

Through the senior design program in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville, teams of students spend a semester developing concept-level designs tied directly to New Glarus projects. The work does not produce construction-ready plans, but it delivers something many small communities struggle to access — professional-quality analysis, alternatives and cost considerations that can inform long-term planning.