Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 8, 1993 TAG: 9310080049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Got it?" asked fellow engineering student Doug Hubert.
"Yup," said Brown, holding his position as the rocket fizzled back onto the field.
While Brown crouched, Hubert examined markings on a half-moon-shaped plexiglass plate underneath the tube, staring at the spot where it slid through the red board on which the tube was perched.
"Forty-four degrees," he announced.
Behind them, math students jotted down the numbers. Crystal Hagerman, a junior trigonometry student, began to figure.
The rocket, she announced a few minutes later, climbed 45.5 meters into the sky.
Welcome to the Roanoke Area Tech Prep Consortium - Glenvar style.
Tech Prep, a regional program serving 16 high schools in seven school divisions, prepares students for the workforce by showing them how to apply classroom knowledge to real-life situations.
"Tech Prep tries to make education more meaningful," said Michael Beamer, a Roanoke County engineering teacher.
At Glenvar on Thursday, that meant combining seventh-grade rocket-building with high school trigonometry, physics and engineering classes. Brown and Hubert designed the rocket tracking device in their engineering class. Trig students used the angles it produced to determine the rocket's altitude. Physics students, meanwhile, worked on velocity.
Home economics students pitched in by providing refreshments and the art class printed invitations to the rocket launching, said Beamer, who serves on Glenvar's Tech Prep team.
But Tech Prep means something different at each of the region's 16 high schools, consortium director Ben Helmandoller said.
In Franklin County, students in applied mathematics figure out how much to charge for a window-washing job by cleaning one set of the school's windows, then extrapolating to determine the length of time it would take to clean them all.
In Roanoke, Patrick Henry High School students combine business and English classes with computer skills.
"What we're trying to do is make these courses relevant," said Helmandollar. "Different schools have different approaches."
Tech Prep - paid for with federal grants - gets involved by paying for teacher-training time, linking schools to businesses and by providing part-time staff and other resources.
Over the past three years, the Roanoke Area Tech Prep Consortium has received $840,000 in federal grants, Helmandollar said. Of that, $55,000 was awarded to make the region's program a model for the rest of the nation.
The money is used to produce videotapes outlining the program for other regions that want to copy it and to speak at national conferences, such as one in Atlanta last week.
Helmandollar and Julia Akers, the program's coordinator, have even prepared a humorous, 45-minute presentation that explains the program and includes a dance they call the "Tech Prep shuffle."
Thursday night, they presented a display of the work they've done with schools at downtown Roanoke's Center in the Square.
The consortium serves schools in Bedford, Botetourt, Craig, Franklin and Roanoke counties and the cities of Roanoke and Salem, said Akers.
It also serves Virginia Western Community College, where students can earn a two-year associate's degree in the program after they finish high school.
Or, they can continue to earn a four-year degree, Akers said.
"Tech Prep is made up of a lot of options, and that's just one of the options you can take," she said.
Students also can enter mentoring or apprenticeship programs with businesses such as Graham-White Manufacturing Co., said Helmandoller. More than 900 businesses work with the consortium.
The concept of Tech Prep programs began in the 1980s, said Akers, when businesses saw a need for workers with more than a high school but less than a college degree. In Roanoke, the jobs that needed to be filled were in the automated manufacturing field.
Employers like Graham-White said they needed entry-level workers with more technical skills as well as more problem-solving, communication and teamwork capabilities, she said.
Since then, the program has branched out to include work in the fields of health and human services, business marketing and arts media, she said.
But it affects almost all students.
Crystal Hagerman, the Glenvar trig student, said she could easily see how Thursday's Tech Prep program would fit into her chosen career.
"I'm going to be an architect," she said, "so I have to have this stuff."
by CNB