WINONA, Minn. – The 2016 Legislature wasn’t good to Winona State even though the university is the state’s premier institution in southeast Minnesota. The university’s priority funding request was $79 million to build a state-of-the-art classroom building. The new building — dubbed CICEL, short for Center for Interdisciplinary Collaboration Engagement and Learning — was to replace Gildemeister and Watkins halls, both of which date to 1960s and were cheap lowest-bid projects.
Call it “Cecil.” The first major academic construction project in a decade at Winona State dead-ended in the 2016 Minnesota Legislature. The so-called CICEL building lost out in the competition for funding. University President Ken Janz said he’ll be back next session for $79 million.
CICEL (pronounced “Cecil” like the man’s name), was to be the new home of the design, computer science, math and statistics departments. The project had been ranked fourth on the Minnesota State system’s priority list for construction funding. What went wrong? Campus leaders quietly lament the 2024 retirement of Gene Pelowski, who represented Winona in the Legislature for 38 years and who served on education committees, in some terms as chair, Pelowski championed education issues and regularly brought home the bacon for Winona State projects. Winona’s post-Pelowski voices in the 2016 Legislature:
> Jeremy Miller, a Winona business operator, who once was influential in the Senate, and who served on the Senate Education Committee, but who rendered himself a lame duck five months before 2016 session began by announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election.
> Aaron Repinski, a former Winona City Council imember, in his first-term in the Minnesota House, who hasn’t much distinguish himself among 134 House members, who had minimal sensitivity on higher-ed issues although he once had attended classes at Winona State.
Surprise: WSU’s $1.5 million consolation
A surprise for most campus people was $1.5 million from the 2026 Legislature for Winona State. The university was awarded $1.5 million to develop a new campus center “dedicated to civic engagement, public service.” The funds will go to remodel a section of the first floor of the Minne classroom building. The Legislature said the funding honors Winna State grad Jason Fossum, a 2001, Winona State grad who was a state senator from St. Paul for more began more than two decades from St. Paul and who has been diagnosed at age 47 with a terminal disease. Most recently Fossum was the Senate Republican chief of staff. The funding replaces a federal grant that had been awarded but then cancelled in President Trump’s 2025 wholesale budget slashing organized by Elon Musk.
Fossum. Namesake for new WSU community-building project. Currently chief of staff for Republicans in the Minnesota Senate.