Karns City receives STEM donation from local business
KARNS CITY — Karns City Area High School received $10,000 Tuesday morning from petroleum refinery HollyFrontier in Petrolia to expand its STEM program.
Representatives from the company visited the school to receive a tour and speak with officials about their science education programs.
Superintendent Eric Ritzert said the company reached out to offer support.
“This is a forerunner to a close relationship that doesn’t have to be monetary,” he said. “Partnering should be something we do more of. We need to understand (HollyFrontier) is a tremendous employer with high-paying jobs in our district.”
Mentorships, shadowing programs and teacher field trips in association with HollyFrontier were discussed as potential ideas among the representatives and school staff.
“The more collaborations, the more chance we take for students to be successful, so they can be employed when they graduate,” Ritzert said.
Representatives toured the school’s chemistry and biology labs with principal Brenda Knoll and STEM teacher Danielle Lemmon, showcasing drones, 3D printers and other devices students use in their courses.
The donation will assist Lemmon in purchasing materials such as a laser cutter and coding kits for her classes in programming, computer science, robotics, web design and 3D printing.
Science program growth
Knoll said Lemmon has done an excellent job implementing new ideas in the science program.
“We didn’t have any of this seven years ago; this is what she’s grown it into,” she said.
Chad Bell, maintenance manager at HollyFrontier and a Karns City alumnus, was impressed by the STEM technology already used at the school.
“It’s cool to see people at 16 and 17 years old doing college-level things,” Bell said. “Being a student here 16 years ago, seeing the woodshop transformed into a lab, seeing this science and technology introduced at an earlier level was cool.”
Anita Orozco, human relations representative for the business, said it will be great to see how STEM opportunities expand at the school.
“It’ll be nice to see you add to this area, to go from this to engineering and jobs (beyond),” she said. “This school district is in our backyard. Keeping them involved in science and technology makes recruiting so much easier when they graduate.”
Orozco said HollyFrontier, which makes Sonneborn-branded products in Petrolia, is always in need engineers and chemists. She eventually hopes to work on field trips and tours for teachers to be educated on the facility. This will help them inform students about employment opportunities, Ritzert said.
“Engineering, sales, technology, this runs the gambit for what people need to be successful in a job. I’d like to see students become more aware of it, so they can continue living here and our district can flourish,” he said.
Tyler McIntyre, senior manager of technology at HollyFrontier, said he would love to collaborate with students on experiments using their products.
“There’s lots of safe products we produce that could open up opportunities to participate and guide some subjects,” he said. “What better way to learn about a business than that?”
“The world’s changing. Seeing the high school change with it was cool,” Bell said.
