Summer classes start at Columbia Basin Skills Center
MOSES LAKE - It's one elaborate doghouse. Insulation, shingled roof, heavy and sturdy, spot right over the door for the dog's name. It's also a three-dimensional illustration of the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center in action.
The skills center opened last week, with two sessions of four-week summer classes. The summer classes are designed for freshman, sophomores and juniors who are thinking about enrolling at the skills center when they're eligible, Director Christine Armstrong said.
In summer session, there's a pre-engineering class and skilled trades like carpentry. The entrepreneur class teaches kids about business. All those classes are working on the doghouse, while the entrepreneurs and the culinary class work on a separate project.
The entrepreneur class came up with the idea to build and sell the doghouse, and also a business plan to make and sell dog treats. The pre-engineering class designed it, and the building trades classes are building it.
The culinary classes are doing a nutritional analysis of the dog treats, Armstrong said.
It's not just a matter of coming up with the idea, according to the kids in the entrepreneur class. They had to think about the cost of materials and labor and factor that into their pricing, John Phillips explained. They had to determine where the market is and who their customers are, he said. "We thought about everything," Joseline Henriquez said.
The pre-engineering class spent their first week actually designing a doghouse. "I thought it was just going to be some teacher writing on the board," Easton Ashe commented. "Way more hands-on than I expected," Jayden Blackman said.
Like all classes, the pre-engineers are using the mondo pads. They resemble an iPad in their Internet connectivity and touch screen, but they're the size of a pull-down screen. Armstrong said that at the moment, the skills center has the most advanced technology in the nation.
Once they had a blueprint, the skilled trades classes started building the doghouses. Aldo Zepeda said there was more to building a doghouse than he thought. Pieces have to fit. It has to be insulated and shingled, which require their own set of skills.
Armstrong said all but one of the classes that will be offered in the fall is offered in the summer. The exception is sports medicine, which will be rolled into the global health classes when school opens in the fall. The summer medical careers class is teaching kids the basics of patient evaluation.
The automobile mechanic and cosmetology programs will stay in their current locations, Armstrong said, but the culinary program is among the tenants at the new building. Armstrong said the old Chief Cafe will have a new name and a new menu. It won't open until fall; culinary students will pick the name and build the menu, she said.