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Chaney STEM School Prepares Students to Pursue Careers
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Walker has an idea. The senior at Chaney STEM and VPA Campus in Youngstown, formerly Chaney High School, would one day like to put his science and math skills to work and design a cell phone with sleek, new features.
“I want to be an engineer,” says Walker, one of 13 seniors enrolled in the school’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, engineering program. “I came here last year as a junior and so far, it’s been really good.”
The 2014-2015 academic year marks the fourth year since Chaney shifted from a traditional high school to a STEM and visual and performing arts campus open to grades six through 12. Some 550 students attend Chaney today, 250 of whom are enrolled in the STEM campus.
“I would say these are some of the best students in the district,” reports Pam Lubich, STEM coordinator at Chaney.
On this day, the second week of classes, Walker and the other students are learning the principles of Ohm’s law and conducting observations of electrical currents as part of teacher Carrie Sinkele’s electronics class.
“I want them to understand the idea that electricity needs a complete circuit to work,” says Sinkele, who teaches engineering.
Students enrolled in the engineering courses take electronics during their first semester, and then move into theory, design and logic in the second.
“In the second semester, they shift toward capstone projects,” Sinkele says. “They can choose whatever they want to do. They have to create reports, make presentations, make a business plan and a marketing plan.” One project this year is to fix a robotic lawn mower that students built last year.
Even more encouraging is that a good chunk of the class has already committed to some type of post-secondary education, Sinkele relates. “We have two going into the Army, one to Ohio State. Others are planning on Youngstown State or Eastern Gateway.”
Walker says he plans to attend Youngstown State University next fall, noting that the engineering program there has an excellent reputation. “I found out that they had a good engineering school,” he says. “Why go to a school far away when you can get a good education close by?”
Lubich says the transition to a STEM and visual and performing arts campus is a significant change from when Chaney was a traditional high school. The workshop area, once filled with tools such as miter saws and lathes, is now the Innovation Works Lab and equipped with a large 3-D printer and a laser cutter.
“Our labs are state-of-the art,” she says. “We have computers. We have laptops. We have CNC routers. We have 3-D printers and laser cutters.”
Students must be accepted into the program, Lubich says. “We look at their academics,” she emphasizes. “We’re not looking for a 4.0, but a decent student, especially in math and science, which I’m looking at in particular.”
Those who enroll in the performing and visual arts campus must audition or make a presentation before they’re accepted, Lubich says.
All of the students take the traditional curricula such as English and social studies in addition to math, science and the arts. “It’s a normal college prep curriculum,” she says.
Chaney offers three pathways through its STEM program: engineering, information technology and health sciences, Lubich reports. All ninth-graders take introduction to engineering design, and at the end of their freshman year, students select which track they would like to pursue.
“We’re really trying to grow our IT program,” Lubich says. “I also want to look at how manufacturing fits into this program.”
Lubich is one of 25 teachers who participated in the Oh-Penn Collaborative’s Educator in the Workplace program over the summer. “I spent four days at Thomas Strip Steel, and we do have kids that could work in manufacturing.”
While a significant percentage of students coming out of Chaney are college-bound, others may not be suited for a four-year institution, Lubich says. “Some of them don’t know what they want to do,” she observes. “By the end of the 10th grade, we try to help them decide what the best course of action is.”
That could mean directing them to a career in manufacturing and the trades, Lubich adds. Choffin Career and Technical Center, Youngstown, recently resumed its welding program and that school has a highly rated precision machining program.
Engineering, on the other hand, used to be a Choffin program but was integrated into Chaney’s STEM initiative in 2011.
Introducing students to math and science at an early age is vital to building their STEM skills later in their education.
Eighth-graders in Sharon Ragan’s STEM class, for example, are busy using a variety of tools to measure everything from the size of their classroom to a garbage can.
“They’re learning how to measure like an architect measures,” Ragan says. Ultimately, the goal is for these students to read a blueprint for a house, create a design of that house on a CAD program, and then construct a small model of the house by using recycled, or recyclable, materials.
“We’ll build the shed, or house, on a computer and then build a model of it,” Ragan says. Middle-school students have at least one STEM class per day, eighth-graders two.
What is also encouraging about STEM-related coursework is that it prepares students to enter the workforce. “There are a lot of jobs in the STEM fields. And we feel that we’re preparing kids to take those jobs,” Lubich says. “We’re real pleased with our graduation percentage and also the number of students that have registered for college.”
She says Chaney has won the Governor’s Award for Excellence in STEM Education three years in a row and she’s pleased at how the school is progressing. “We’re real happy with where we are right now, and we’re looking at different ways we can improve.”
Pictured: Nyere Howell and Taekwon Driver work with teacher Sharon Ragan.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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