The Windham Renaissance Family Center originally only needed some electrical work to be provided to the Calvary Chapel Church’s lighting, but it has blossomed into much more. Thanks to the hard work of the students in the Electrical program and also in the Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning at Maplewood Career Center, the building has undergone extensive work over the last several weeks.
“It was a huge opportunity for them to get their eyes and hands on some different equipment where in our lab we are limited to how much equipment we can put in there,” Maplewood Career Center HVAC instructor Joe Roth told The Weekly on March 14. “They got to see some larger commercial-sized equipment and it just gave them an opportunity to learn something new versus what we have been working on in the lab.”
In just a few weeks, the Maplewood students have replaced most of the lights, fixed several boilers, cleaned burners, oiled motors and changed filters on air-handling equipment. While Roth supervised the HVAC students, the electrical students were overseen by electrical instructor Joe Svonavec.
Maplewood sent 30 students, all seniors, to work on this project with 16 of them being electrical student and 14 of them hailing from Roth’s HVAC program.
According to Roth, most of the of renovations have been completed with only a few minor things to address once the students return from spring break. According to Roth, the HVAC students still need to install a motor in the cafeteria while the electrical students will replace a few more lights, which is expected to only take a few more days.
Roth said that the entire cost of the materials was covered by the Renaissance Family Center, but the students gained valuable work experience which also could be applied to their work-based learning hours.
“Even when we are running labs, they are getting some of those hours because it is work-based even though it is not out in the field, but these students are able to earn based on their grade point average and attendance rate to go out on early placement and apprenticeships,” Roth added.
Roth said that the project was originally offered to only the electrical students but after Svonavec conferred with Calvary Chapel Church’s Pastor Tom Charvat, they realized that there was more work that could be assigned to Roth’s HVAC program, Svonavec approached Pastor Charvat to give his students a chance to get their hands dirty.
Roth noted that it was the first offsite project that the HVAC students have gotten to work on since the program started three years ago.
“Every one of them was excited,” he said. What did it mean to them? They enjoyed just being out in the community and meeting the people and interacting with them; the community then came to me and told me how respectful our students were and how nice they were.”
He said that his HVAC students getting this chance was a testament to the growth of the program in only three years.
“If some of the people saw our lab, the first week of school the first year and have now seen all of the equipment that we have added and the number of students they’d be amazed. I started with 12 students the first year, the second year I had 25 come in and this year we had 23 juniors come in,” he said.
While several programs at Maplewood teach specific skills, Roth said that the HVAC program teaches a variety of skills that are folded under one umbrella.
“HVAC is all of the trades wrapped up into one,” he said. “We don’t just do HVAC, we do a little bit of plumbing, a little bit of pipe fitting and a lot of sheet metal and fabrication; we do soldering and brazing, we do refrigeration work, and we learn some electrical work.”
He also added that it was an added benefit for his students to have the opportunity to give back to Portage County by working for a distinguished non-profit organization.
“They were definitely all very excited to give back to the community and also give back outside of the school to work in a real-life situation,” he said. “Our instructors at Maplewood are all trained in our field, I am a licensed contractor myself. To know that they have competent help leading them is one thing that made them believe that we could come in and do the job.”