The Niles Star

Machine tool training making the cut

Cody Beatle and Brad O'Donnell, both Brandywine students, work as a team during their Manufacturing Academy course Tuesday. (Daily Star photo/JESSICA SIEFF)

By JESSICA SIEFF

Niles Daily Star

Along with school boards across the country, the Brandywine Community Schools Board of Education takes a look each year at its budgetary issues, what programs it can afford to keep and what courses won’t be offered in the next year.

Around the time of budget planning last year, board members were told of Chris Inman’s machine tool tech class he teaches to all grades as well as his manufacturing academy course, which is taught on site at Lake Michigan College’s Bertrand Crossings Campus to students from schools like Brandywine, Niles, Buchanan and Berrien Springs.

When word got out that the program might not be available due to low numbers of students signing up for the course, Inman said his students went to bat for a program he describes as quite valuable.

“They went around the school, they started recruiting amongst their friends,” he said. “I didn’t have to say anything. It’s a really good program and nobody really knows about it.

“It’s a secret that shouldn’t be kept,” Inman said.

With just 12 students enrolled in his manufacturing academy last year, Inman said he has 17 students this year and numbers are up in his machine tool tech course.

Now, the secret’s out.

Between Inman’s two programs, students learn the fundamentals of machining, tooling, welding, mold making and other aspects of manufacturing.

The academy itself has been arming students with possibilities for their future in the manufacturing industry at LMC for 12 years.

“Some of the students will go on to become engineers,” Inman said.”We do what we can to prepare them.”

And Inman said the industry these students could enter into is not as bad in terms of jobs as the media might have many believe.

There are jobs, he said, “there actually are. It’s a trend right now with the economy. It’s certainly hard … one minute a company is booming and they want people and one minute they’re down and they’re asking guys to take volunteer layoffs.”

Inman said several area companies have called him expressing interest in the talent and quality of students he has in his classroom, and interested in possibly hiring them for work.

“A majority of our students will place in an apprenticeship program of some sort,” Inman said. That apprenticeship program will give those students the opportunity to work 40 hours per week and have their college tuition paid for.

The companies that come down to visit Inman and his students at their shop at Bertrand Crossings Campus “will hand pick them,” he said.

“This area has a long tradition for tool and die molding,” Inman added.

Programs like his are fueling the opportunity for trained workers for those companies.

And those companies are as supportive of the course as the students are. Inman said several have donated resources for the class.

“They’re really supportive because they want this here,” he said.

Just like the manufacturing industry, which has seen its dark days make headlines, Inman said several factors affect the numbers in his class as well, including requirements necessary of students that limit their availability for elective courses such as his.

With recent changes, he said, “students are able to take the electives again. And they want to take them.”

Not bad, for a course that almost wasn’t available at all.