Page 8 - TTMNSpring2024

Career Pathways — Manufacturing
Page 8 Electronic Edition: www.teachingtodaymn.com

E3 Designs and Manufacturing

Grand Rapids High School
NEXT career pathways were started
in our area in 2017. We were determined
to develop a better process to get students
exposed to and experience career pathways
and this was a way to give students the best
opportunity to experience careers that exist in
our community, around the state, and world-
wide.
Manufacturing and Healthcare were our
main focus to start with as they were the great-
est areas of need for employees throughout our
area and around the country. This is where the
fabrication and design class first originated. It
is currently & better known as E3 Designs and all, but we all came out better and we had set
Manufacturing, which is the name the students something in motion that was truly unique.
came up with the inaugural year of the class. Looking back at how far we have come
One of the great things about Next career over the years, the progress the students have
pathways is that it involves not just Grand made is amazing. They have elevated their
Rapids High School, it also includes seven game. We now make custom arms for several
of the schools under the IASC (Itasca Area companies, including some big names.
Schools Collaborative) umbrella. This allows Over the years we have designed and
programming to cross borders that have never developed adapters for all of them so they are
been crossed before. as if from a regular manufacturing company. arm which articulates out to hold your trans- a direct fit and can easily be attached to your
Students attending one school have the Little details like this make huge steps towards ducer instead of the classic float. The arm is ice fishing unit.
ability to take classes at another school. This is the authenticity of our products. short and prone to breaking in the extreme
a wonderful thing as we know not all schools conditions of winter fishing.
can offer everything, so we have specialty Design and Fabrication . . . Our team developed the Hole Hooper.
hubs at locations for students to get advanced E3 Designs and Manufacturing This arm is longer, providing easier access to
programming. In the first years we started with the ice hole, and is machined out of aluminum
Grand Rapids High School, Greenways High What do we do? How to me make it a which makes it much stronger. It’s directly
School and Nashwauk-Keewatin High school capstone class? How can we make it the best bolted on and can be custom engraved. Having
as this made the most sense geographically. learning experience for students within the no idea how to market this to the public we
Next continued expanding to all the schools school walls? used social media and fishing forms to adver-
in the area, and this is where the Next career We got ideas from and took tours of Car- tise our product.
pathways name originated. As we got up and dinal Manufacturing in Wisconsin, looked at
running, everyone kept saying: What is next? other programs, and in the end, we blended it
I want to do this next. Next we need to offer together and came up with our own plan for
this to students. success.
The name stuck and we are always We went all-in and developed a full-
looking to what we can do Next to improve fledged business within the school. We
and make the student experience better. researched ideas, looked for holes in the
The first year we really tried to form our market, developed products, tested them and
own identity as we had students from three sold them on the open market like any other
different schools. Being as close as we are business would do. We wanted our own
there is always some rivalry, so we thought product line where we did everything to make
to overcome that by creating an identity that it from ground zero. I don’t know of any other We now have two Haas mills and one
was unique to our class. 3 had to be involved program that does it this way and we wanted Haas lathe and are in the process of getting
as there were 3 schools participating. In to make it something special for the students. a live tooling lathe to fit our growing needs.
developing the pathways, we wanted to have This way, everyone has a place in the We have spent the past two years developing
students Explore, Experience and Excel so the business. There are positions from the business products that we can now build with our new
E was easily incorporated as well. One of the manager to the team that develops new prod- lathe. This year students took the initiative and
students said, “let’s do E3 Designs and Manu- ucts for us. It sounds like amazing company developed a fishing plastic, that of course is
facturing”. It was a hit, and everyone agreed. and it is, but there were a lot of bumps and for ice fishing and is sold at a local sports shop
We tackled the colors and decided black bruises on the path we took. Those trials and that has supported us since our inception. We
needed to be in there as every school had black tribulations, failures and successes have taught hope to continue to grow this student run busi-
in its logo and added yellow to be different. We us way more than we could have ever imag- Looking back, we were building the plane ness and see where our students can take us.
are lucky to have a Graphic design class in our ined. as we flew it, but this provided an amount of The possibilities are limitless as long as we
building. Mrs. Boedigheimer and her students What product do you make that fills all learning which can never be measured. We got give them the opportunities to succeed.
did a wonderful job of coming up with designs those needs and gets kids excited to do the our first real break with a Minnesota based
for our new class logo. It was easy as Lily had work? custom rod manufacturer. They placed a large
a killer design that all the students loved. To Custom ice fishing gear that individuals order with us, and this really built our confi-
this day we still get tons of help/support from could personalize was the answer. dence that we could do this, and that people www.isd318.org/grhs
Mr. Boedigheimer and Mrs. Storlie in the print We developed our first product by trying liked our products. We crawled and clawed
shop as they make all of our decals to go on to fix an issue with an existing product. There our ways through that first year not knowing
our products so they look just as professional are depth finders manufactured with a plastic where it would bring us. It was a wild ride for