Mat-Su Career Tech students creating face shields for community

By Jacob Mann Frontiersman.com

WASILLA — Mat-Su Career and Technical High School robotics students crafted over 500 face shields that were directly donated to people across the Valley. The students have been actively engaged in the all-encompassing project, and continue fulfilling requests with the school’s 3D printers.

“We could be selling these things for a lot of money to do who knows what with, to support the robotics program or whatever… We’ll just donate it to you,” Mat-Su Career Tech science teacher Chad Finch said. “It’s more fun to have the kids and the district going around donated them for some goodwill in the community.”

Finch has been teaching for 12 years and currently offers classes in robotics, 3D modeling and printing, and digital electronics classes. He set out with the Cyberian Tigers, the school’s robotics team, to start making face shields to be donated to the public around the initial outbreak period of COVID-19.

The robotics team quickly got to work finding local places they could donate their face shields, including Mat-Su Regional Medical Center. They started making face shields toward the end of the school year and kept going all summer long.

“It’s pretty impressive these guys spent their whole summer making face shields instead of goofing off,” Finch said. “It takes some labor to pump these out.”

Local veteran couple John and Gerrie Deal have been instrumental mentors to the Cyberian Tigers throughout the face shield project, according to Finch. They’ve been offering students numerous years of engineering experience as they continue to refine their production skills.

He noted that Sherrod Elementary teacher Robert McClain was also very helpful with his work on the fabric attachment, and helping his staff assemble their shields from their components on a Professional Development Day.

Finch said that through this project, the school acquired seven additional 3D printers and about $1,000 worth of film. He said there’s still plenty of material left and they’ve got plenty of momentum going across the board.

“We don’t plant on stopping any time soon… We’ll probably go all school year,” Finch said.

Finch’s students have distributed face shields to their school staff members and to staff across the district. Sherrod ordered 70 shields. All the district nurses and nutrition services staff received shields.

The shields themselves have been refined several times throughout the project, according to Finch. He said they’ve been approved by the district and they’ve been following NIH recommendations. He noted that it takes about five hours to make their shields due to the high quality.

Finch said the kids learned all kinds of information, from the “robotics and business side of it.”

“It was a great project for them,” Finch said. “It went in so many diff directions.”

Career Tech junior Brody Miller has been involved with the robotics team since its inception. He said that it’s been a great way to develop leadership skills while better understanding different types of technology.

“It’s pretty fun,” Miller said.

Miller said that he’s had a great time digging into the face shield project and the feeling he gets knowing those shields are going to people in need feels even greater.

“I think it’s a really great program, because of what we have, we’re able to produce them. It seems like a really good use of our resources. It’s also been a pretty good learning experience on how to produce things on mass,” Miller said. “It is an awesome feeling, just being able to help your community in any way… how the effort you put in helps people in the world.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com.