Launching students in tech careers

Room IA-5 at Oakmont High School is abuzz with the sounds of mills, lathes and drills as students focus on a new challenge.

Though the cold Thursday morning is final exam day in most classrooms, test jitters give way here to a sense of awe about what can be accomplished.

"It's pretty cool," says 17-year-old Kellen Mongerson, one of 32 students using drills and other equipment to make small catapults from scratch.

Instructors hope creating facsimiles of a weapon from the past will be a lesson for the future.

The two-hour exercise was courtesy of the Sierra College Center for Applied Competitive Technologies' Tech-Explorer project, a mobile shop designed to inspire students to consider careers in technical and manufacturing fields. The project targets the most likely audiences, such as these teens enrolled in Oakmont's robotics class, where they learn to design and build functional machines.

While robotics instructor Steve Dicus likes to joke that "if you're having fun (in his class) you're clearly doing something wrong," the makeshift catapults launched plenty of grins and laughter.

Alicia Maneafaiga, 18, a senior and the only girl in the group, clearly was enjoying herself, though she said she was intimidated at first. "I've never seen a heat gun or one of those little drilly things," she said, inspiring giggles from her classmates.

But participating in the robotics class and activities such as the catapult project have allowed her to work with tools that someday might apply to a job, she said.

Sandra Scott, Sierra's director of workforce development and continuing education, said making tools and projects accessible to students is what her program is all about. Organizers hope students will gain an interest in engineering, design, manufacturing and technology careers.

Sierra College secured a two-year grant of $121,000 a year from the California Community College Chancellor's Office to establish the project.

Oakmont is the fourth school to sample Tech-Explorer, which previously was offered at Colfax and Iowa Hill high schools in Placer County and Mammoth High School in Mono County.

Scott said the catapult project is particularly instructive because it can be taught in three levels. Dicus' students were making the first-stage catapults, which have a mechanical function. The catapults can be modified later to use solar power or electricity, teaching students the concepts involved in those areas.

"Manufacturers need people who are 'skilled up' to do technical jobs, and these jobs pay well," Scott said, noting that Sierra College offers a degree in "mechatronics," a merging of mechanics and electronics.

For 16-year-old Devin Gibson, the catapult exercise at Oakmont was both fun and instructive.

"We're building things from scratch now, and that teaches us how to fabricate," he said. "

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