Getting hands on with NIC's CTE roadshow

SANDPOINT — Sophie Slater, a sophomore at Sandpoint High School, smoothly spun the handwheel as she manually machined a piece of tooling wax. As she used the second handwheel in coordination with the first, the blade began a diagonal cut across the square piece of wax.

“That’s why girls make good machinists right there — good hand-eye dexterity,” said Kurt Kimberling, North Idaho College instructor in machining and CNC technology.

Kimberling, a five-year instructor at NIC, was at SHS Friday, along with 20 other NIC programs, to give students some hands-on experience in machining technology as part of the NIC CTE Roadshow. As CTE stands for Career-Technical Education, many of the programs that participated were hands-on, including an automotive diagnostics training simulator, using an impact wrench to change a tire and a diesel truck was on site for the diesel mechanics program.

John Oliveira, a 2014 SHS graduate who is now in computer-aided mechanical design at NIC, was scanning students heads to create 3D computer models. While they were not actually printing the students heads, a 3D printer was present, which Oliveira said the mechanical design and architecture students use for some of their coursework. The clear shell of the 3D printer allowed students to view the process as it printed a miniature catapult. Oliveira also had fish-shaped item printed that he was handing out to seniors. The fish had a mobility to them that acted in the manner a fish would as it swims.

“It is really cool that we can print objects that actually move, and they don’t need to be assembled or anything,” Oliveira said.

Oliveira said helping out at the roadshow was a great way to show the students what is done in the computer-aided design department and to “try and get them interested.”

Alex Gray, SHS instructor and CTE coordinator for the Lake Pend Oreille School District, organized the event along with SHS counselor Jeralyn Mire. Gray said the idea came from a conversation on an airplane during the CTE summer conference and he thought it would be an “awesome fit” for SHS to bring the hands-on experience to the students.

“Getting kids out of their comfort zone, giving them some confidence, meeting the postsecondary instructors, a couple of the students, seeing what it really means — I like to see them exposed to that stuff now,” Gray said.

Gray said many high school students don’t realize that many of the CTE programs are multifaceted, such as how much computer technology is involved in automotive, so seeing it can help them understand what areas really interest them.

Mire said what she thought was great about the roadshow is that all the high school students from SHS and Lake Pend Oreille High School, freshman through senior, were exposed to CTE opportunities.

“It’s for students to realize that career-technical education is growing and there’s great need,” Mire said. "And it's an honorable profession, as well as students can make a solid living wage, especially for students who may want to stay in this area. Students who are interested in not moving away from the area, there is a lot of opportunities available to make a living wage.”

While this was the first year SHS has hosted the CTE Roadshow, Mire said she hopes to bring it back next year and grow it by including some of the local industries.