Uniontown students prepare for competition
Looking over one of the CO2 cars built by students at Uniontown Area High School are (from left) Perry Leapline, TSA president; Jordan Van Horn, designer; Mark Lengvarsky, secretary; Kim Dillinger, manager of the REACH program with Fay-Penn; and Maranda Cavallo, treasurer. Inside Gregory Buel’s classroom, students are spending their final frantic days in preparation for a competition about which they have only heard, but not yet participated.
The students, members of Uniontown Area High School’s fledgling Technical Students Association (TSA), have been gearing up for the event for several months, not long after forming a chapter of the organization.
The competition will be held Friday on the California University of Pennsylvania campus, and as many as 20 students will take part in a number of different events.
Senior Perry Leapline and sophomore Mark Lengvarsky will compete in a problem-solving event, while senior Maranda Cavallo will develop an architectural model of a home for six people with disabilities that must follow the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Sophomore Jordan VanHorn is developing a CO2 car and working on a poster about shop safety. Most of the students are competing in more than one event during the competition, Buel said.
According to TSA, the organization was started by industrial arts teachers who wanted to provide opportunities for their students to be recognized for their accomplishments and was originally the American Industrial Arts Student Association (AIASA).
Buel, who has been teaching at the high school since last school year, said the students got behind his idea of forming a TSA chapter and immediately began preparing for the regional event.
Not only did the students support the effort, but members of the faculty and administration also endorsed the group’s formation, Buel said.
While the students are working in his shop, he said students in his classes are incorporating other subjects into their work, including writing, speaking and mathematics.
“With every project I assign, students have to talk about it in front of the class, they have to analyze the cost of the projects and they have to turn in a one-page paper about their design,” he said.
Buel and his colleagues at the high school are working to update the district’s technology education strategic plan to make sure that what students learn will be in line with technology standards adopted by the state Department of Education.
“Technical education today doesn’t just give job-specific skills, its gets students ready for college to prepare them to be an engineer or an architect,” he noted, adding that Cavallo will attend Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus this fall to study architectural engineering technology and Leapline will head to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown for mechanical engineering technology.
REACH, an arm of Fay-Penn Economic Development Council, helped the chapter get started at Uniontown Area with a financial contribution, according to Kim Dillinger, workforce/education development specialist.
The initiative got behind the TSA, she said, because it provided students with a new opportunity, the competition will allow their work to be seen by other schools and the students will get to interact with students from other school districts and learn more about technology education.
“What I like is that this is not a one-time thing, that it builds the foundation for more competitions,” Dillinger said. “We’ve already spoken about the next phase, and we may help the group or help to seek out its next funder.”
REACH’s goals are to alert the public of new, exciting opportunities available to students in Fayette County and to encourage businesses to partner with schools, she said.
Students who are successful at the regional competition will advance to the state competition at Seven Springs Mountain Resort near Champion in April, and possibly to a national event in Chicago.
While the local students aren’t looking past Friday, they are excited about what they will bring to the event and what they will take back with them.
“I have no clue what’s going to happen, but it will be fun to meet people who are doing the same things,” Lengvarsky said.
“Once we know what goes on there, we’ll be able to recruit more people and get them involved in what we’re doing,” Cavallo said.
For questions or more information about TSA, visit www.patsa.org. To contact the Uniontown Area High School TSA team, e-mail tsa_uniontown@excite.com.