Photo By Scott Sturkol | Fort McCoy Garrison Commander Col. Sheyla Baez-Ramirez (left) meets with University of...... read more read more
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Fort McCoy Garrison Commander Col. Sheyla Baez-Ramirez made her first visit to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse on Jan. 22 in La Crosse.
During the visit, Baez met specifically with the university’s newest president/chancellor, Chancellor James Beeby. Beeby became the new chancellor in 2024 — just as Baez became Fort McCoy Garrison’s commander in 2024.
In an hour-long meeting at the university, Baez and Beeby discussed Fort McCoy’s partnership with the university.
“Fort McCoy is a huge part of the community here (in this region),” Baez said during the meeting. “We are also good partners with school districts. … We also take part in community activities (with educational institutions). … And we like to expand our partnerships.”
Baez completed the visit with support from members of the Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office.
Beeby was accompanied by staff member Stacy Twite, the chief of staff for the chancellor’s office, and by the ROTC leader for the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Lt. Col. Brian Knutson.
Knutson, through ROTC, has worked with Fort McCoy personnel in a variety of ways but mostly through training ROTC cadets. One other thing the ROTC detachment in La Crosse supports and participates in is the Northern Warfare Challenge every year where hundreds of cadets come to Fort McCoy and La Crosse from a wide range of U.S. Army Cadet Command detachments to compete in the challenge.
The next Northern Warfare Challenge will take place in late-February 2025, starting first at Fort McCoy and then finishing at a designated area in La Crosse.
Another longtime partnership between the post and the university, which Beeby and Baez also discussed, is the relationship Fort McCoy has with the university’s Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center.
Fort McCoy’s artifact collection contains more than 600,000 artifacts ranging in age from Native American artifacts that are more than 12,000 years old to World War II-era military artifacts from the 1940s, and nearly all are stored with the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center.
Those artifacts are the result of nearly 40 years of archaeological work and documentation at the installation, and their helping tell the story of Southwest Wisconsin’s recent and distant history in the Driftless Area of North America, said Fort McCoy Archaeologist Ryan Howell with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Howell is part of the team that leads the effort to oversee the large collection of artifacts, and said the center at the university is a perfect place to house the artifacts.
“The Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center is the closest federally sanctioned curation facility to Fort McCoy and has a long history of working with the installation’s cultural resource management program,” Howell said. “Most of the Fort McCoy (archaeology) staff and others have worked or trained with the program over the years. Plus, most scientific interest in the Fort McCoy collections would most likely come from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse archaeology program or scholars visiting it to see other collections.”
At the completion of this first meeting between the military and civilian leaders, furture meetings were planned to continue building the partnership.
“I think it’s really important for us to have a strong relationship,” Beeby said.
Learn more about the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse by visiting https://www.uwlax.edu.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 01.24.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 01.24.2025 13:50 |
| Story ID: | 489626 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 49 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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