From one grant to another, the Hoover High School [HHS] Career Tech programs are setting their students up for success. After the state of Ohio awarded HHS with a total of 6.5 million dollars in grants out of their annual
300 million dollar budget, the advancements made possible by the grants will help for generations to come.

The grant that Hoover engineering teacher, Mr. Todd Alkire, applied for the Ohio Technical Equipment Grant which is “a funding initiative provided by the state of Ohio.”

“Its purpose is to assist schools in purchasing and implementing equipment and machinery that will offer training and job opportunities for students in high demand employment sectors within the state,” he said. “This equipment is often quite costly and typically not accessible to school districts.”

When writing a grant proposal, there are pages of information and hours of work put into making a program’s dream, the reality.

“So the state of Ohio released funds for two purposes, for construction/expansion, and then another one for equipment,” HHS associate principal, Mr. Robert White said. “So this was the equipment one so we [through] that were still able to renovate.”

White believes that the purpose of the Career-Tech programs are to provide the students with opportunities they may not get to experience otherwise.

Although Hoover already has an engineering program, through the 2.5 million dollar grant, it will be rebranded as an Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing program, which adds another element to the already impressive Engineering portion and allows for interested students to get more experience in that specific field.

“It will get them better prepared for what they’re going to see post high school slash post college,” White said. “So whatever’s next for them, it’s going to get them better prepared and allow them to see state of the art innovative equipment and how that can be implemented in future careers.”

With the grant allowing students to expand their academic horizons, this is the perfect program to prepare students for the workplace in an engineering related field.

HHS junior Jackson Mead is planning on going into either mechanical engineering or automotive/motorsport engineering post graduation and believes that it will make his “high school learning of the engineering field so much greater” and provide him with a better preparation for after high school.

“The grant has helped us get new tools and machinery that is just as good if not better than the machines that would be found in a professional setting,” he said. “As for what it means for the program, I think that it will allow the program to prepare students even more for college and real-world engineering by introducing and allowing students to use the state-of-the-art machinery and tools that are used in high quality engineering facilities.”

Because of this grant, there are many new forms of technology that the program will acquire.

“The new projects we can tackle are now limitless with industry level CNC [Computer Numerical Control] machinery, advanced additive manufacturing capabilities, programming and coding, not to mention a new makerspace for advanced printing and textiles,” Alkire said.

Out of all the new machinery and equipment the Engineering program received, Mead is most excited to work with the new CNC Router.

“It will allow us to create practically all of our robotics and engineering projects in house rather than relying on local companies to do the work,” he said. “This will allow us to complete large-scale projects, like the robot for the robotics team, at a much quicker pace and with the quality that we demand.”

In Stark County alone, there are 17 school districts and 550 local manufacturers, all of which Hoover students could have the possibility of working for after their high school careers are over.

“We want to keep our young, bright minds here in our county, and we can only do that if we have jobs available for them,” White said. “So we need to have the jobs, and we need to have the workforce, and we’re working directly on the workforce side. We’re hoping that the jobs remain right here for those people.”

The funding given from the state of Ohio will allow HHS to enhance their program by giving students “the opportunity to earn industry credentials that can lead to employment right after high school, and in some cases, even while they are still in high school.”

“The grant funding allows us to carry out $1 million in infrastructure and facility upgrades, as well as invest $1.5 million in machinery and equipment,” Alkire said. “These improvements will focus on areas such as engineering technology, welding and general manufacturing.”

Because of this grant, there are more opportunities for students to get experimental and contribute to many new projects to come.

“The new facility fosters creativity and innovation,” Alkire said. “Students are no longer restricted to researching only topics that interest them or developing solutions for community-based problems. We have aimed to create an environment where the only limit is the students’ imagination.”