The ISD 200 School Board hosted its first Community Collaboration Committee meeting of the 2025-2026 school year Thursday, Oct. 2 to introduce Superintendent Dr. Kristine Wehrkamp Herman and showcase the district’s new Anatomage table.
The Community Collaboration Committee is a relatively new committee from the school board, beginning three years ago as a way to create transparency and work more closely with public stakeholders.
“We need you to be involved,” said Director Philip Biermaier.
Wehrkamp Herman took the opportunity to introduce herself to the public at the meeting. Wehrkamp Herman started in the district July 1 after four years as superintendent in Royalton. She highlighted her reliance on teams and joint decision-making as foundational to her leadership style: “I rarely—if ever—make a decision in isolation.”
Her team-based leadership style was one of the key qualities school board members referenced during superintendent interviews in wanting to bring her to the district.
Wehrkamp Herman also discussed her nearly 15 years of experience in business before shifting to education, characterizing that time as “there was really no other purpose to that work [besides] the paycheck.”
Wehrkamp Herman went back to school at the University of Minnesota for a master’s in education and Ph.D. in educational leadership. She worked in St. Paul Public Schools, White Bear Lake and Robbinsdale before becoming superintendent at Royalton.
Wehrkamp Herman took the opportunity to praise her time working with the Hastings School Board, especially recent work in creating the new strategic plan and then aligning the superintendent goals to that new plan.
“They worked so hard as a team to get that strategic plan right,” said Wehrkamp Herman.
The meeting was also an opportunity to showcase the district’s new Anatomage table which is currently being used in various science classes including the new Healthcare Professionals class.
The Anatomage table is a functional computer built into a table that houses detailed scans of cadavers that can be manipulated, dissected and examined in a number of ways. Each cadaver is a unique human cadaver of a real person who donated their body to science. Cadavers range across ages and conditions so that different diseases can be compared side by side.
Ellie Gullicks, a biology teacher at Hastings High School and teacher of the Healthcare Professionals class, alongside High School Principal Scott Doran, walked attendees through some of the table’s functions.
At the meeting, the cadaver of “Victor: who died of congestive heart failure was highlighted, including having his heart beat in real time to show how the muscle built up within his heart affected its functioning.
Cadavers come with MRI and X-ray scans which the numerous speakers for the Healthcare Professionals class can reference.
“The number of kids saying they want to go into medicine or healthcare is skyrocketing,” said Doran about the use of the table within the Healthcare Professionals.
The table also houses science experiments, such as the ability to play air hockey with variable friction levels to what it would look like to enter a black hole.
Gullicks highlighted an experiment that tracked the population of rabbits in an environment based on several factors including the rate of grass growth. This experiment mirrors real world estimates of deer populations that need to be controlled.
In the classroom, students can identify muscles, bones and organs within cadavers which was previously done with purchased cats and owl pellets. While Doran couldn’t estimate savings from replacing those regular purchases with the Anatomage table, those savings are already being realized in the district.
“It’s realistic enough when you get a sense of it,” said Gullicks.
Another activity Gullicks mentioned was having students diagnose diseases they are learning about within cadavers based solely on examining them.
Doran said there is still much to learn about the table’s capabilities and its usage within classes; he guessed the district had only tapped into less than a quarter of the table’s full abilities.
The next Community Collaboration Committee meeting will take place at 6 p.m. Jan. 12, 2026 in the high school lecture hall.