NORTH LIMA, Ohio – Lorenzo Paez-Wells said he didn’t know what to expect when he was invited to participate at KTSDI LLC’s STEM Day on Thursday.
Yet the experience introduced him to a broad range of skill sets that he found both interesting and fun.
“I was a little nervous,” Paez-Wells said after he completed his first welding task. “It was pretty fun. It’s not something that I will do in my future, but it’s pretty cool.”
Paez-Wells was among 30 ninth and 10th graders from Valley STEM at Mahoning County Career & Technical Center who received a firsthand look at the various trades used in the manufacturing and safety sectors.
KTSDI – along with representatives from other local organizations – hosted the event at its plant on New Middletown Road. The morning consisted of students spending 15 minutes at 10 different stations, where instructors demonstrated skills such as welding, measuring, crane operation, wood working and building.
There were also tours of safety force vehicles such as Beaver Township fire and EMS trucks.
“My hope is to demonstrate the opportunities in the community with the various partners that have joined us,” said Ken Timmings, manager at KTSDI. The idea is to expose these young people to some of the basic tasks performed in manufacturing, construction, safety and the mechanical trades.
Representatives from organizations such as Youngstown Oxygen & Welding, Diamond Steel, Fernstrom Construction and NEO Impact Academy were present to give short tutorials and then allow students to perform some hands-on projects.
“I’m going to give the students a chance to learn a little bit about welding, and let them try their hand at it,” said Buster Brown, sales engineer at Youngstown Oxygen & Welding. Students were tasked with welding metal parts that form a small airplane or an eagle.
Brown said the program gives students exposure to processes that are vital to manufacturers in the Mahoning Valley. Welding, for example, can pave career paths in fabrication, materials joining, automation and engineering. “There’s a lot of different things,” he said.
Among the other stations, students built a platform and tower on an uneven surface. “They’re incorporating some of the knowledge and retention that they’ve taken from most of the day and applying it to an actual activity,” said Ralph Urbach – commonly known as “Mr. Ralph” – of NEO Impact Academy.
Student Brianna Grosick said she is interested in biomedical pursuits but enjoys all STEM-related courses. “I also do a lot of STEM stuff at my school, and this relates to a lot of stuff that I’m currently doing,” she said.
The idea for holding a STEM – an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – program at the company came from an earlier project with Valley STEM Academy, Timmings said.
“I’ve had close cooperation with them for years,” Timmings said. In December, the company presented a challenge to Valley STEM students to devise a solution to a problem the company was having with paint protectors it used on finished hubs it manufactures for the transportation market.
“They designed these paint-protector solutions for a big problem we were having with our production,” Timmings said. “They modeled them, 3D printed them; they milled them out and made prototypes. That was the foundation of what we’re fostering today.”
Once the designs were finished, Timmings and other KTSDI representatives hosted a Shark Tank event where they evaluated four groups that created different solutions to the problem, he said.
Mike Lopuzhobsky, a lab instructor at Valley STEM, said the students were more than eager to take on the project.
Once the project was finished, Timmings invited the students to tour KTSDI’s facility and engage with other local companies.
“Everybody else being here and helping out is just a bonus,” he said. “It’s really nice.”
Pictured at top: Lorenzo Paez-Wells, a student at Valley STEM at Mahoning County Career & Technical Center, displays a metallic eagle he welded.