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Manufacturing careers highlighted at MCCTC
By Denise Dick
CANFIELD
Mahoning County Career and Technical Center’s Cutting Edge Manufacturing Event on Tuesday appealed to Campbell Elementary/Middle School seventh-grader Michael Yasechko, 12.
“I love to design things,” Michael said.
He was one of more than 700 students from across Mahoning County who learned about the evolving manufacturing industry and the careers within it.
The students met with professionals from the hydraulics/pneumatics, welding, engineering and machining industries, learning about each one.
Professionals included Ryan Engelhardt, plant manager at Brilex Industries in Youngstown; Patrick Prokop, a union ironworker who also teaches at Choffin Career and Technical Center in Youngstown; John Mshar, a maintenance technician and machinist at VAM USA of Youngstown; and Sam Trimm, a mechanical engineer at BOC Water Hydraulics Inc. in Salem.
The professionals explained to students how their respective industries were involved in creating a component or how it’s used.
Students in groups of about 15 competed to see who could assemble a pump and use it to inflate a balloon.
Michael’s face reddened with exertion as he pumped as fast as he could. His team won, earning packets of M&Ms for all of them.
“I just kept going faster and faster,” Michael explained of his winning strategy.
Elizabeth Figueroa, 12, who a seventh-grader at Campbell Elementary/Middle School, is considering a career in engineering.
That may be a good way for her to employ her favorite subject every day at work.
“I love math,” she said.
Bert Gervais, who immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti as a child, was the event speaker.
Gervais, an author who also is known as “The Mentor Guy,” informed students that manufacturing is a lucrative field.
The average, experienced manufacturing employee in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys earns more than $69,000 annually.
That compares with an average of $34,725 per year for employees in nonmanufacturing fields.
The speaker urged students to be willing to do what others won’t and not to shy away from failure as some of the most successful people didn’t achieve their success quickly.
“In life, you’ve got to be willing to step through failure to get to success,” Gervais said.