COOKING FOR A BETTER FUTURE!

(November 13, 2009)... At the Indiana County Technology Center (ICTC) the students are frequently given opportunities to be in the spotlight.  On Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Chef Robert Piccirillo was accompanied by two Culinary Arts students, Laken Decker and Jessica Boring to the Eighteenth Annual Conference on Integrated Learning: The School-To-Career Connection conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Bureau of Career and Technical Education.  The Conference took place at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, State College, Pennsylvania.  It is estimated that more than 700 conferees were in attendance.  Chef Piccirillo says that he chose these two students because, “they expressed an interest.”

The conference is designed to discuss ways to prepare technical students to achieve more.  At the conference Laken gave a speech and a video presentation demonstrating different ways to be creative in teaching academics, such as math and reading/writing.  Jessica did the same type of presentation only she chose to use a PowerPoint presentation.  When asked how she felt about presenting at the conference, Laken responded, “I was very nervous but I had a lot of fun.  It was a great experience and Chef Piccirillo said it will look wonderful on my portfolio.” 

In her presentation, Laken used the newly designed ICTC cook station.  The portable cook station sporting the logo, “Cooking for a Better Future,” was designed, created and built by several program areas at the ICTC working together including, Culinary Arts coming up with the overall concept and design of the cook station, Graphics and Electronic Media creating the final vinyl graphic that was mounted to the front of the cook station, and Electrical Occupations adding stainless steel receptacle outlets to provide power for the stove top. Welding Technology fabricated the main body and structure of the unit and Carpentry fabricated the laminate counter top with a wooden edge.

Speaking of Carpentry, have you ever wondered about the construction process for a modular home?  Well the carpentry students at the ICTC are gaining that knowledge first hand.  The students in the carpentry program have begun work on constructing a modular home.  They will construct the modular home in two sections with as much work as possible being done in the controlled environment of the carpentry program area; however, once the floors and walls are built the students will have to move outside in the elements and continue the construction in a more traditional “stick-frame” style construction.

The project should take nearly the entire school year.  All students in Carpentry will have some involvement in the construction process with the more advanced students taking on the leadership roles.  The home construction is being financed by Westmoreland Human Opportunity (a non-profit organization) in conjunction with S&T Bank.  Once the modular is completed, Westmoreland Human Opportunity will eventually help a qualified family to make the modular their home. 

To familiarize themselves with the modular home process, the Carpentry students recently took a field trip to New Era Modular Home Factory in Strattanville, PA.  Mr. Dennis Overdorff, Carpentry Instructor stated, “the field trip was excellent as we observed skilled craftsman perform the various operations involved in modular home manufacturing.  The students asked many questions and seemed very interested and appreciative of the opportunity.”  When I asked Tim Vatter, a sophomore from Saltsburg about the opportunity he said, “I am ecstatic about building this home because I have a passion for carpentry.”

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