NEW CASTLE, Pa. – The aroma of hot metal, plasma cutting and crude oil greets visitors to the oil and gas class at Lawrence County Career and Technical Center.
Bottles and cans of oil and other fluids used in the industry top instructor Jay Parsons desk. He used to work in the oil and gas industry and came to LCCTC 12 years ago when the program started.
“When I started, there were five of us in the state,” he said. “I’m the only one left in the country. Everybody else that’s doing this program, they’re doing petroleum engineering, which is the lab coat and the computers and stuff. I’m the only one that’s actually teaching them hands-on functional items.”
His students built a 40-foot drilling rig that stands behind the school.
“It weighs 8 tons. It’s got a quarter-mile of steel in it,” Parsons said. “And they cut every beam and drilled every hole by hand.”
The first rig took about five months to build. Students this year built a second smaller one in about two months.
“They have pipeline systems,” the instructor said. “We have two wells drilled. We’ve got one that’s operating. We do it as a water well. We can pump 100 gallons per hour, which we use a compressor, and everything I have here is what’s in the oil field.”
Concepts are broken apart and made simpler though, helping students understand. They know how each piece works, he explained.
“They do welding in here. They do fabrication. They do plasma cutting, pipe threading. There’s a lot of things we do in here,” Parsons said.
Work on a recent afternoon included restoring a manual lawnmower and repairing a kettle. Parsons wants his students to learn by doing so they’ll be able to apply those skills in situations that might crop up on a job.
Unlike traditional classes where a teacher gives step-by-step instructions, Parsons directs his students to accomplish a task and allows them to figure out how to do it. If they encounter problems, they ask him for help.
That’s what students like about the class.
“I enjoy working with my hands, so I built that slammer hammer myself,” junior Austin Gerrish said of the multifunction tool. “It was pretty cool. He gave me a bunch of material and told me to put it together.”
Gerrish, who is from Neshannock Senior High School, figured the rest out on his own.
“I think that’s definitely one of my favorite things,”added Maddie Peoples, a senior from Neshannock. “He’ll tell us, ‘This is what I want. This is what you need to do. You figure out how to put the pieces together.’”
Gerrish wants to be an electrical lineman after he graduates. Peoples plans to enter U.S. Army basic training after graduation. She wants to be an Apache helicopter mechanic.
Parsons said the class prepares students for more than 70 careers. Some students have secured jobs working in oil fields. Underwater welding, heavy construction and trucking company owner are some of the professions of former students.
The class restores donated items, from an old drill press to a cooking kettle. Even if class is the only time a student sees that piece of equipment, the restoration teaches them skills they can apply to other tasks.
“Part of it is creating citizens, but it’s creating people with a work ethic and to make them valuable in whatever job they get into,” Parsons said.
Gerrish worked on the smaller oil rig behind the school with juniors Jordan Taylor and Caden Gardner, both of Neshannock Schools, crunching numbers to determine dimensions.
“We had to use the forklift, and we had to put the basket on it so we could weld and fire, so that was a team effort,” Gerrish explained.
Taylor said he and Gardner started with blueprints and mocked them up.
“We kind of made them our own,” Gardner added.
Elizabeth Sturvrich, a senior from Union Area High School, and Chelsea Bentle, a junior from Lincoln High in Ellwood City, point out that students in the class work together.
“It’s always something new,” Sturvrich said. “We’re always learning something new every single day.”
Pictured at top: Lawrence County Career and Technical Center students Austin Gerrish and Maddie Peoples stand by an oil rig that was built by students in the school’s oil and gas class.