National Career and Tech Education Month

Everyone knows what a Roomba is, right? It’s a little robotic vacuum that roams around picking up stray trash. A group of students in Harrison County made one from scratch. That’s just a fraction of what you’d see at the Career and Technical Education Center at Harrison Central High School. This month they’re celebrating National Career and Technical Education Month.
Sparks are flying at Harrison Central High School. Engineering and robotics student Matthew Upton said, “It’s just something I love doing. I can see myself working at this for years and never getting tired of it because there’s always some new to learn.”
And something new to design, Upton is hoping his start here in the county’s career and technical education program will lead to a career designing vehicles for a large car corporation one day.
He was just one of many students showcasing their projects this Valentine’s Day, all labors of love geared toward giving back to society. Engineering and robotics student Gwen Hindeman said, “We try to create stuff not just for fun, but also that can be problem solving and that we can kind of learn from and that we can tinker with until we find the best solution to a problem.”
More than 100 students from surrounding Harrison County schools take part in the two year program, learning skills in automotive technology, architecture and drafting, and other specialty fields, equipping these students with the tools they need to keep them on the cutting edge of technology and advancement. “We’re learning this stuff now that some senior engineers are just learning. We’re going to have a lot longer to work with it so we can develop it a lot further than they might have the chance to,” said Upton.
One precision machining student says this program keeps cranking out opportunities for all students. Machine shop student Cassie Mitchell said, “There’s a lot of freshmen girls that come in here that tour and I would really like to see them come in to the vo-tech building because I feel like there’s not enough girls and we have an opportunity so I feel like we should try to get them in here because every woman has an opportunity to do this.”