West Ottawa receives grant for engineering, manufacturing education
PARK TWP. — A new grant partnership will make it possible for for even further opportunities for West Ottawa Superior College students to obtain techniques for in-need production work.
West Ottawa was a person of 16 faculties in the condition selected as portion of an growth of the SME Schooling Foundation’s Partnership Reaction In Production Training — SME Key — program.
The SME Instruction Foundation acquired $6 million from the point out to scale up SME Primary this yr.
The method is meant to construct producing and engineering systems in substantial faculties throughout the state to provide gear, curriculum, professional advancement, scholarships and STEM-concentrated extracurricular things to do for students and teachers.
West Ottawa will use the partnership to “ramp up” technological innovation and producing solutions, which are presently well-known choices at WOHS.
“We have a pretty robust industrial engineering division now, we’re working at ability in those people classes,” said Todd Tulgestke, assistant superintendent of tutorial products and services at WOPS. “There is a lot of student demand in those locations. We experienced the opportunity to companion with the SME Primary organization and perhaps some nearby sector leaders to aid to update and ramp up our devices and curriculum methods to aid those learners and academics.”
Subscribe:Get limitless access to our local news protection
Tulgestke said WOHS has “one of a kind” labs for a high school at present, but the grant application will enable for upgrades.
“We’re privileged to have those people on our high school campus,” he said. “Of system, some of the equipment in there is approaching 17 yrs aged that developing was constructed in 2005. This grant is form of a way to kick get started us updating some of the true equipment inside our industrial know-how areas and classrooms.”
Applying for SME Primary involved WOHS delivering information and facts on their recent engineering, classes and curriculum and the SME Key workforce coming for a tour. The subsequent action will be a study of group companions to determine what they need.
“We’re operating with the OAISD and Lakeshore Edge to survey our advanced producing group companions,” Tulgestke reported. “We’ll use the grant cash to develop greater pathways to fulfill the needs of our local manufacturers in accordance to what the study states.”
Expanding possibilities in industrial technological know-how and highly developed production falls in line with the district’s motto of “College, Occupation and Lifestyle Prepared,” Tulgestke mentioned.
“These courses we offer and these techniques have a important relationship to the profession readiness piece,” he said. “For students suitable out of superior school heading to perform in these substantial-in-demand employment, the profession readiness facet, there’s not actually a improved illustration than this pathway we offer our college students.
“It’s also about university readiness. Quite a few children graduating will go on to trade faculties, apprenticeships or submit-secondary schooling. We have an obligation to support those people enterprise associates come across their upcoming generation of workers and workers and to assistance our youngsters make people connections to good-paying, superior-in-need work opportunities.”
— Get in touch with reporter Mitchell Boatman at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelMitch.