Becker High School hosted their first-ever, Manufacturing on the Road Fair in the north commons of the school Wednesday morning.

 

The fair was the brainchild of Principal Sandy Logrono, teachers Alex Jurek, Jeff Zimmer and Matt Eigen, and Darrin Strosahl of SCTCC and Tonya Fuller of Park Industries. After Logrono and the teachers took a tour of some of the technical programs at SCTCC this past fall, they were impressed with the experience and looked for a way to bring it all to their students.

 

Thus, the fair Wednesday at BHS.

 

Logrono also opened up the invitation to students at Big Lake High School and a busload of students arrived just after lunch to visit with businesses  and industries and learn more about the trades.

 

Some of the businesses in attendance were Talon Innovations, MPG, Arconic, SCTCC, Park Industries, McDowall Company, LPI, DCI, Cold Spring USA, Metal Craft, Nahan, UMC and Xcel Energy.

 

The event was much like a business expo with booths manned by employees who could explain the business in simple terms and visually give the interested parties an idea of what the company does. Some of the booths featured milled metals, engraved stone and woodcut placards. A couple booths had 3-D printers showing off their remarkable ingenuity and another booth had several remote-control robots for the kids to play around with.

 

One of the SCTCC booths was manned by Becker student, Ross Ulsby because Ross is taking classes at the school while finishing out his senior year at BHS.

 

“I’m telling you, there are a lot of job opportunities and plenty of cash to be made in these industries,” Ulsby said excitedly. “I’m in a machine shop programming class right now and I’ll probably stick with it and see what the future holds for me.”

 

Ross’s father owns S&T Machining and Welding in Clear Lake, so he is very familiar with the business and the kinds of jobs they offer.

 

 Jared Graham, a 10-year employee at Xcel Energy, was thrilled to be part of the manufacturing fair and was honored to be one of two guys manning the booth.

“This fair is a great idea to get the kids engaged in manufacturing and technical-type fields,” he said.

 

Graham is an NDSU graduate in engineering.

 

Fuller of Park Industries was a key contributor to the fair Wednesday as she was responsible for contacting and organizing the pulling in of industrial businesses from the area for the half-day event.

 

“We did this to try and influence some of these young minds that wouldn’t ordinarily look at the possibility of attending a trade school or go into a manufacturing career,” she said. “We want the kids to get over the misconception that manufacturing is dirty or a less-than-ideal workplace. We want to make it cool.”

 

The people at the booths also explained that many of the jobs are not all “hands-on” or “in the warehouse” types of jobs. They also have jobs in quality control, dispatch, driving, purchasing, shipping & receiving, estimating, inventory control and technician jobs.

 

Mitchell Johnston and Austin Bentkowski — seniors at BHS, said they were impressed with the fair and learned

a lot from the event.

“There were very helpful people at the booths who taught me some new things and might give me a side path for some work should I need it down the road,” Bentkowski said.

 

Bentkowski plans to attend Anoka Ramsey to study marine biology when he graduates.

 

Johnston said he plans to attend Hennepin Tech to study landscape design.

 

“This fair hits home with me because I like the idea they are promoting the tech colleges over the expensive, four-year colleges,” he said. “It’s nice to see the school taking an interest in that.”

 

Strosahl of SCTCC said the ultimate goal of the manufacturing fair was to get students to see the connection from education to employment in these types of industries.

 

“Instead of bringing kids to college campuses and talking at them or to them, we thought having them be in a comfortable place (school) and have them get a hands-on demonstration or interact with the business and their employees,” said Strosahl.

 

Strosahl said Cold Spring USA has a program where they pay a student $12 an hour to work parttime while they are in school, then, if they do well in grades and attendance, they will get a $6/hr. bonus should they stay on.

 

Park Industries also will hire students in school for mechanical design and if the student wants to go back and get a bachelors in engineering, they will pay for the last two years of their schooling.

 

“I like to tell the students, for every one job that requires a PHD, there’s two other jobs that require a bachelors and seven others that require technical training,” he said. “We want to help kids find a career path who are interested in a solid career making good company for industries looking for workers.”

 

Logrono hopes to make the manufacturing fair an annual event.