May 15

May 15 A Technical Education Program’s Community Support

Machining, Machinist, Manufacturing, Soft Skills, Technical Education

The community support of the technical education program at Eleva Strum High School is impressively large and there are several reasons why. The technical education program operates as a student-run business that fabricates and machines parts for customers. The business is called Cardinal Manufacturing. The money made by the business is used to buy raw materials, upgrade equipment, marketing, cover the operating costs, and to pay the student employees.

Every May the program opens its doors to the public for the Open House Event. I have attended several open house events and have always been amazed at the number of people at the event. The event offers food and beverage to the guests. They have live demonstrations of machining and manufacturing of various parts that they sell to their customers. While I attended this year’s event, a student showed me how they machine parts for equipment that cleans basketball courts.

Teacher Craig Cegielski founded the program. Craig has been a middle and high school teacher since 1998. He has grown the student-run business model into a program that can be replicated in any school with determination and the right partners.

To learn more about the program at Eleva Strum High School, visit www.CardinalMFG.org.

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Matthew Schowalter, CMfgT

Matthew started his manufacturing career while in high school as a youth apprentice. He went on to study Tool and Die making while pursuing a apprenticeship. Upon completion of the 10,400 hour apprenticeship he used his Journeyman Tool and Die making skills to make tooling for the motorcycle industry. From there he spent ten years making surgical instrumentation for spinal surgery, while leading the machining department. He most recently became a manufacturing engineer at a global manufacturing company, while focusing on machining processes. He started this website after researching what kind of information people pursuing or starting a manufacturing career need to succeed, and how the information should be presented.