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Stay young, stay committed

The couple of times that I’ve been asked to speak to a group of teenagers, the first question that pops into my head as I look at the audience in the eyes is, “Are they breathing?”

Such is the case with teenagers. They may be present, but they are not entirely there in most instances. They are thinking about what’s for dinner, the night’s homework, arranging a ride to work, getting together with friends, or anything else besides the boring guy talking about what it’s like covering fabricating technology and why manufacturing is important to the U.S. They know it all already—at least until the test comes back and says otherwise.

Such is the battle that members of the manufacturing community face as they try to entice the next generation to consider a career as a manufacturing technician, welder, or engineer. They are trying to sell a message to a group that, frankly, has their minds already made up about what they are doing after high school. Often manufacturing doesn’t make the cut.

Manufacturers and educators interested in promoting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum now understand that they need to target an even younger audience. For many, the focus is on middle schoolers, who are joining robotics teams or have the opportunity to tour nearby metal fabricating facilities. But even middle schoolers are beginning to formulate their own views of the world before they step foot on campus for the first time. Does the manufacturing community need to target an even younger audience?

Steve Meyer, a technology and engineering teacher in Brillion, Wis., thinks so. He now spends half of his day, in addition to his teaching duties, training elementary teachers on how to become more effective STEM educators. The school district has committed to having every student from kindergarten to fifth grade take at least four units of engineering and technology curriculum, which can cover areas such as materials science, chemical engineering, manufacturing technology, and electronics.

“It’s taken off like wildfire. I bet 98 percent of the kids will say that STEM is their favorite class,” Meyer said. “They are up. They are active. They are really doing some neat things.”

Meyer knows what a successful STEM learning environment looks like. He’s been around long enough to see the Ariens Technology and Engineering Education Center built at Brillion High School (following the $1.5 million donation from the nearby Ariens Co.). The center doubled the school’s STEM education area to 10,000 square feet, providing space for a 58-seat lecture hall, a room with 28 CAD stations, and five design room for students to work on projects. Meyer said the STEM program now draws interest from about 230 students each year in a school that has about 350 students. Girls make up about 35 percent of the students taking the STEM-related elective courses.

“We want everybody,” he said. “We think of STEM as a part of general education.”

Meyer wants to replicate that success at the elementary school level now because “STEM on a cart,” as he describes the current educational setup in the elementary school, just doesn’t cut it. For the past 18 months the school district has been finalizing a plan for a STEM center for the elementary school, and it has raised $1.2 million of the $1.7 million needed to pay for the project. (If you are interested in contributing or learning more about the effort, visit here.)

When complete, the STEM center will look more like a children’s museum than a 1950s-era classroom. Not only will computers and rooms dedicated to large projects be a part of the final design, but a 30-foot-tall rocket also will be present to inspire students and act as storage for their STEM-related work.

“Oftentimes as educators we have to be very careful. At times we can beat the creativity out of them. We put them in rows. We tell them exactly what the right answer is. Really, it should be the opposite,” Meyer said.

“We found out in about 10 minutes that young kids can do these things. They are extremely smart. They are very, very creative, and we have to allow them opportunities through STEM education to explore these things.”

To say that manufacturing heavily influences Brillion would be an understatement. Three major manufacturing-related companies, Ariens Co., Endries International Inc./Professional Plating Inc., and Brillion Iron Works, actually have more manufacturing employees than people who live in Brillion, which is a town of about 3,000. The town and its citizens—both corporate and private—have made it clear how important manufacturing is to their community.

If manufacturers truly want to solve the problem of improving manufacturing’s image and building a pipeline of technical and engineering talent, they only need to look to Brillion to see how it’s going to get done.

Start young and stay committed. It’s not easy, but accomplishing something that’s difficult rarely is.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.