The answer was to expand
the district’s mission by ensuring its students were either
college ready or career ready and to make this mission a
reality, in the course of the last half dozen years, TPS has
become the most comprehensive school district in northwest
Ohio, notes the information in its literature – offering
more than 35 career technology options, along with its
advanced placement courses, its foreign language choices and
its various associate degrees.
One of those career
technology options is available at Jesup W. Scott High
School in David Dowling’s classroom where, for the last four
years, he has taught precision machining and manufacturing
technology to 10th through 12th
graders.
The precision machining
program instructs students on engineering concepts, metal
lathes, milling machines, digital readouts, drill presses,
surface grinders, computer numerical control machines, among
other industrial craft tools. The program prepares students
for careers as millwrights, mechanical engineers, CNC
operator/programmers, robotics, precision machinists, die
cast die makers, tool & die makers, mold makers, punch press
operators and quality control supervisors.
Dowling arrived as a
teacher in the Scott precision machining technology program
with the precise background needed for such a calling.
A Whitmer graduate, he
studied machine trades at Owens Community College in the
late 1990s and mechanical engineering at North Central State
College in the early 2000s and worked at Dana Corporation
for a decade as a quality technician, in engineering and
machining and as a quality manager before abruptly changing
careers and returning to college at the University of Toledo
to earn a bachelors in middle-childhood education and high
needs education.
He joined TPS as a math
and science teacher after a stint at Horizon Science
Academy. Durant plucked him from Ottawa River Elementary for
Scott so that he could create the program and prepare
students for industry.
Between 15 and 20 students
in each of the sophomore, junior and senior classes are part
of the precision machining program, says Dowling. “We’ve had
a lot of success,” he says of the student involvement. “We
are doing something right and we’ve had a lot of support
from the District.”
However, the program’s
success is not reflected simply in the growing numbers of
student participants and Dowling is something more than a
classroom instructor. He’s also a recruiter, and a bit of a
salesman. As he sees it, part of his job is to be out
recruiting companies and selling them on the virtues and
capabilities of Scott students.
When he’s not at the
school instructing his charges on the finer points of
machining, he’s out in the community and business world
seeking placement opportunities for his students –
internships and job placements – “quality experiences,” he
says.
He has worked with
numerous local companies and staffing agencies to provide
mentoring to students, to “update and upgrade equipment” in
the machining shop and to place the students in jobs – good
paying jobs, in fact.
“There are lots of
opportunities – people are begging for their skills and
there is a huge gap in the skilled labor force,” says
Dowling.
It’s not just the
immediate workforce for which Dowling is preparing his
students. Some, like Mordecai Mosby, a senior who has taken
three years of precision machining, will be headed to
college where those skills will help with a number of career
paths in the long run. Mosby has been accepted to Kansas
University where he plans on studying architectural drawing.
The impact on the district
of these new programs – the wider range of choices – has
been dramatic. Since 2014, according to the Ohio Department
of Education Report card, TPS has seen a 16 percent increase
in the four-year graduation rate and an increase in student
enrollment of about 1,800 students after the numbers had
been steadily decreasing for several decades.
“The world needs makers, builders, programmers – technical
types,” says Dowling of the impact Scott’s program is having
… on the world!
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