BUILDING SUCCESS

WASILLA — The year-old Mat-Su Career and Technical High School might just be one of the few area high schools where students eagerly jump from their seats to show visitors what they’re working on.

Marcus Farquhar is one of these students. The junior engineering and architecture student shot from his desk as visiting media strolled through his classroom, excitedly showing off a structural stress analyzer used to test the breaking point of materials. As some of his classmates huddled around, Farquhar began stretching a piece of metal until it snapped, garnering cheers from his audience.

It’s all in a day at the Career and Technical High School.

While eager students can be found in more traditional schools, Career and Technical High School Principal Ben Eveland said his school attracts students who want to be there.

“They’ve created their own culture,” Eveland said.

Eveland is at the helm of a different kind of high school experience, one based more on practical training than routine class work and standardized tests. Students learning construction in the building concentration are even building a house next to the school that will soon be on the market.

With the school’s first year wrapping up, Eveland said its approach to education seems to be working.

For Farquhar, that he willing applied for the school, submitted his documents and sat through an interview just to gain acceptance seems to align his ambitions with his peers.

“It makes it easier to go to school every morning,” Farquhar said.

That’s the idea.

The career and technical school offers students career-specific training throughout their four years. Students interested in health care, for example, can immerse themselves in the discipline in preparation for post-high school goals. This approach, at first foreign to students in the Mat-Su, seems to be gaining traction.

This past school year saw roughly 256 full-time students and some 160-part time students, Eveland said. Next year the school will reach its maximum, with 400 full-time and 100-part time attendees.

The school’s population explains why a student would want to pull him or herself away from a traditional education to learn in a school with no sports teams, no pep rallies and any of the other traditional high school clubs and activities a typical school would have.

“It’s crazy cool,” sophomore Ray Muetz said of CTHS.

Muetz touts the rigors of real-life situations from which the school requires its students to learn as a hallmark of the institution. He said a recent exam in a culinary class calling for the preparation of real food for a passing grade sets his school apart.

Eveland said the district’s new vocational school is different from other schools for obvious reasons, but also for other reasons he notices daily.

“Look at these lockers, not a scratch on them,” Eveland said, pointing out the cleanliness and order of the year-old building, implying a higher level of respect students have for their school.

Eveland said his students are in a place they asked to be instead of somewhere the school district put them, and it shows as he performs less of the stereotypical principal duties.

“You don’t get a lot of disciplinary problems,” Eveland said.

Less time spent scolding seems to have freed up the former Peninsula resident to become more in touch with the student body.

As Eveland slides from class to class, joking and laughing with students along the way, he’s greeted happily around every corner. Like a proud parent, Eveland tells how each student has something special, a unique talent he wants to boast about.

One of those students is freshman Dani Rieth.

Manipulating an AutoCAD program on a sleek looking Dell computer, Rieth proudly showed off a house she designed using the same software major architectural firms use. As she pieced through each layer of her home — a maze of multicolored lines foreign to someone who’s not familiar with the software — Rieth said that, unlike her friends in other area high schools who are sitting through English or science class, she’s learning a skill she may use in a future career.

“You get a lot more freedom to get to do what you want to do,” Rieth said.

What if those wants change?

That’s where Eveland said CTHS’s versatility comes in. Some areas of concentration are referred to as pathways, each one occupying its own section of the high school’s building. If a student like Rieth, who said she may consider nursing at some point, wants to switch a pathway, all he or she has to do is ask.

The tactic of getting students to begin thinking of a career early is part of the point, school officials said. Since students accepted to the school must choose a discipline on which to concentrate, career-minded thinking starts as early as freshman year.

“I think the kids are more focused on thinking about what they want to do after high school,” physical science teacher Donna Carollo said.

Down the hall from Carollo’s room, her observation is playing out in a student named David Willequer.

In a room buzzing with the sound of hard-working computers, flat-screen monitors hold the attention of a dozen students, including Willequer, writing code and plugging into servers. Willequer is prepping himself for college by doing the same things someone who’s already graduated from college would do.

“There’s a lot more opportunities here,” Willequer said. “Pretty much any career you want to go into you have it here.”

Willequer attended Wasilla High School for two years until CTHS opened. Now, he’s doing all he can in the technology field to pave his way into DeVry University and a career.

With the school’s first year coming to a close, Eveland said he is pleased with the way his school has performed. There are some rough spots, like attempting to fully integrate the academics necessary for a high school diploma into each career field, but Eveland said that’s a work in progress.

Pepper Thiede, who was teaching a freshman customer service class Monday, said not only have students been excited about the new high school, but community members as well. Their response could bode well for graduates from the school.

“Every business owner I talk to is thankful we teach them,” Thiede said.

Contact Frontiersman reporter Michael Rovito at 352-2252 or michael.rovito@frontiersman.com.