Cimarron-Memorial Career Tech Academies get financial boost

Press Release
December 17, 2014
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At Cimarron-Memorial High School, $50,000 is the magic number.

Not only did the school’s robotics team recently receive a new tooling machine worth that amount, its information technology program also received computing equipment worth $50,000.

MACHINE TO ENHANCE ROBOTICS PROGRAM

The Career Tech Academies at Cimarron-Memorial, 2301 N. Tenaya Way, cut the ribbon on its newest piece of equipment, a Haas TM-2P CNC Mill, Nov. 20. The mill was purchased for the school’s Engineering Academy by Cimarron-Memorial High School, Steve and Susan Philpott, Lewis Engineering Corp. and a grant from NV Energy for use as the pinnacle tool for the Computer Integrated Manufacturing course. Training was provided by Mark Jones and Clint Barnes.

Junior Chris Woerner, president of the school’s High Rollers Team 987 robotics team, said the $50,000 machine can virtually build the team’s competition robot parts from scratch.

With the new machine comes a new strategy for the robotics team.

“We wanted to make a defensive robot because, over the years, we realized that’s how the first-place team was doing their games, by (depending on) defense,” Woerner said.

Senior Trevor Ritz called it “our brand new toy.” By programming the machine, the students can take a concept drawing for a part, import code and cut the part from raw metal stock.

It allows the team “to have very, very small tolerances, plus or minus three-thousandths,” Ritz said. “So, it allows us to create pretty much any part that we can think of and have it ready within a day … Before, it would take upwards of two weeks.”

Kirstie Ritz, Trevor’s sister and a freshman who is also on the robotics team, said the training to use the machine was “fairly simple … (Jones) broke it down and made it easy to follow.”

The first item it made was a brace for part of the robot’s chassis.

SCHOOL NAMED A LENOVO SCHOLAR NETWORK SITE

Nov. 20 also marked the kickoff event for the school being selected as a site for the Lenovo Scholar Network. As part of the program, National Academy Foundation students from 10 IT academies across the U.S. participate in mobile app and entrepreneurship courses intended for the project-based competition.

“We don’t know what the challenge is just yet. It hasn’t been announced yet,” said Jennifer Stensrud, director of school’s Academy of Information Technology. “That’ll be in the next few weeks. Two-student teams develop the apps. Each team has been given a backpack with a tablet and a laptop, and they’ll develop the app and also make a marketing strategy to bring it to market. So, they’re practicing their businesses skills as well.”

Stensrud said the software being used isn’t software she’s used to teaching, so they’re all learning together.

“In my introductory computer science course, I teach a programming language called Scratch, which was developed by MIT, and this app development software was also developed by MIT, so there are a lot of similarities,” she said. “I don’t anticipate it will be too challenging.”

There are 46 students in the IT academy and taking computer science courses, so there will be 23 two-person teams.

A win “would be huge for our school,” said Stensrud, “because the IT academy is in its first year, and in this town, the Career Tech Academies and the magnets have so much clout, and we’re struggling to establish ourselves as an academy. … The robotics team has a history, so I used that as a way to get our foot in the door. So, even though this is the first year of our academy, it’s built on the success of the robotics team.”

The school partnered with the NAF and is using its accredited curriculum for both the IT and Career Tech programs.

Mason Scott graduated from Cimarron-Memorial in 2014 and is studying engineering at UNLV. He did a summer internship with Nikkiso Cryo, a local engineering facility, and impressed it so much, he was hired.

“Without this, I would have never been able to get that opportunity,” Scott said.

How does this change the game for the school?

“It’s the kids’ experience that it changes,” said Marc Rogers, chemistry and robotics teacher. “They’re able to make everything in-house, so they’re a lot more involved in design and fabrication. So, they’re going to be way more marketable when they go out to get a job.”

It also helps them to prepare for mechanical engineering degrees or go directly into the work force at fabrication shops, Rogers said.

For more information about the academies at Cimarron-Memorial, visit cmhsacademies.com.

Contact Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.

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