Ashtabula County Technical and Career Campus and Iten Industries offer work experience to students

A partnership between Ashtabula County Technical and Career Campus and Iten Industries will help A-Tech students get a jump start on their careers.

Iten Industries is a 100-year-old company that works in fabrication, logistics, prototyping, discovery, and several more industrial areas, according to their website. Last fall, Iten began working with A-Tech students to show them how what they were learning in the classroom could be translated to real-world labs.

Ohio has a Work Based Learning requirement set up by the Ohio Department of Education. According to the department, as soon as freshman year of high school, students would be participating in Work Based Learning on job sites, internships, or even remote work to the tune of 250 hours. The ODE defines Work Based Learning on their website as “sustained interactions with industry or community professionals in real workplace settings, to the extent practicable, or simulated environments at an educational institution that fosters in-depth, firsthand engagement with the tasks required in a given career field, that are aligned to curriculum and instruction.”

Several students at A-Tech are turning their Work Based Learning Experiences at Iten into jobs. Dale Dehn and Tyler Morales, who are seniors in the Engineering Academy Precision Machining program, were given the spotlight in a piece by the Star Beacon.

According to the Star Beacon article, the two students, as well as several others, have been working at Iten part time through the Early Placement program at A-Tech. The program allows students to begin working in a job that is related to what they are studying in their senior year. Both Dehn and Morales will be starting in full time positions at Iten after they graduate in May. Iten will also be sending them through A-Tech’s Adult Apprenticeship Program.

Speaking with the Star Beacon, Dale Dehn said that he was “pretty excited to get out there,” and that “it feels good to know I have something I can keep going with.”

A-Tech’s Engineering Academy instructor, Ron Maurer, also spoke with the Star Beacon about his pleasure with the program. “This wonderful experience provided my students with a short-term industry experience prior to graduation, and a chance for Iten Industries Inc. to evaluate my students’ abilities.”

Ron Emery, part of the leadership team at Iten, spoke highly of the partnership between Iten and A-Tech, and the positive impact it and partnerships like it would have on the community: “Iten realizes these students are part of its future and Ashtabula County’s future and corporate citizens like Iten have an obligation to the community that it draws workers from. We are breaking the traditional rules on how we operate with a huge investment in technology that changes the future of work. Iten has invested in a number of groundbreaking technologies like 3D Printing and state of the art CNC molding and machining technologies that allow us to engage the technical schools in a whole new vein.”

Ashtabula County Technical and Career Campus currently offers both high school and adult education programs in more fields than just industrial manufacturing. They also offer several programs in healthcare and nursing including an LPN program and an LPN to RN diploma program.