COVID-19 doesn't slow industrial training for Auburn students

Ohio’s Auburn Career Center has successfully navigated its way through COVID-19 in the last year.

 “We did have to shut down for two weeks, but other than that we finished classes and have seen enrollment be strong,” staff member Michelle Rodewald said in an email to Plastics News. 

 “We added an online component to all of our classes to give students an opportunity to continue learning at home if they have to quarantine or if they get COVID,” added Rodewald, who serves as Auburn’s director of adult workforce education and business partnerships. “We have also used Zoom when students need to Zoom into class to be safe.”

Auburn is a vocational school for high school students located in Concord Township, Ohio, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. The school has about 30 students in industrial maintenance and industrial electrical classes. 

One Auburn student is working as an intern at plastics extruder Mercury Plastics in Middlefield, Ohio. Auburn has had an internship program with Mercury for several years.

Rodewald said that since Auburn is a large facility with large labs, students and faculty “can spread out and be safe.”

“Our board of education, along with the Lake County board of health, worked really hard coming up with a great safety plan involving students going in and out of the building closest to their class,” she explained. “We used masks, social distancing, the whole nine yards.”

Adult students paying for classes also “have been good about doing what they need to do to stay in school,” Rodewald said. “We really don’t have too many problems with students following the rules.”

“It’s the same for the high school students. They want to be here. Many of their home schools were online or hybrid for so long that it’s great to be here doing hands on and in person.”

Auburn serves 11 area school districts. Thermoset molder and materials maker Mar-Bal Inc. of Chagrin  Falls has hired several Auburn graduates over the years. For the 2020-21 school year, the firm began a Certified Production Tech program with Auburn through three local school districts, Mar-Bal President and CEO Scott Balogh said in an interview with Plastics News.

The program works with high school freshmen and sophomores at their own schools. They then can  continue on to Auburn for more training. About 120 students are in the initial program.

“We need to train the next generation of manufacturers, and we have to sell manufacturing as a career, not just a job,” Balogh said. “It’s all about people development.”

The school recently received donations of industrial equipment from Solon, Ohio-based manufacturing firm Swagelok Co. Swagelok has hired more than 20 Auburn students in recent years.

Auburn has more than 700 students in total, who spend a half-day at Auburn and the rest of the day at their home schools. The manufacturing program provides training that students can use in a variety of industrial jobs.

Tool and die training given at Auburn can apply to plastics technologies such as injection molding and extrusion. The school’s manufacturing lab has six CNC machines and 20 CNC simulators, where students can learn CAD/CAM technology. In addition to manufacturing, Auburn has programs ranging from automotive technology to health care and emergency medical services.