Students get hands-on look at state’s construction trades

PALMER — Casey Castillo peers into a surveying scope at the Alaska State Fairgrounds trying to make sense of what he sees.

Around him, hundreds of other students pound away with hammers, learn the fine art of painting and get their hands a little dirty. Outside, heavy equipment — of the bulldozer, snowblower and big-rig variety — attracts the attention of seemingly every student, with an orchestra of loud horns sounding nonstop.

Castillo and his peers are experiencing the first Construction Career Day, a recent event put on by the state’s Department of Transportation, various unions and private organizations attempting to drum up interest in trade careers.

The idea, organizers said, was to pique the interest of students getting ready to make a decision about what to do after high school.

For DOT Commissioner Leo Von Scheben, the event was more of a recruitment. Many organizations are becoming desperate for workers, including the DOT.

“We’ll lose a third of our staff in the next five years,” Von Scheben said.

With projects such as the gas line and pending retirements of some longtime workers, today’s youth will be relied upon to fill the void, he said.

“These kinds of programs are essential,” Von Scheben said of the April 30 event. “I don’t know if we can register to these kids how important it is.”

That could be where the nearly year-old Mat-Su Career and Technical High School comes in. The school, located next to Teeland Middle School, offers a direct education in myriad disciplines, from architecture to health sciences, welding to automotive services. Graduating from the school will still get a student a high school diploma, but can also prepare him or her in certain disciplines to become certified. That’s what organizations like the DOT like to hear.

In a speech to students, Von Scheben harkened back to his own youth, saying youngsters had three choices after graduating high school: go to college, join the military or work for your dad.

Today, Von Scheben said society seems to have made it so the only acceptable post-high school decision is to go to college.

More than just a chance for the DOT and the other organizations at the event to raise interest, the day at the fairgrounds also served as a chance to show students another career option beyond typical college coursework.

“It’s pretty sweet,” said Castillo, a sophomore at Burchell High School.

Castillo said the construction trade, specifically working on the mechanics of giant equipment, has always interested him and is something he’d highly consider going into after school.

But choosing to forgo college for a career laboring with organizations like the DOT doesn’t mean education can take a back seat, said Jenny Baer, a WIA career counselor with the Mat-Su Career and Technical High School.

“Math, math, math,” Baer said, stressing the importance of the subject in construction trades.

More students than she figured dropped by the booth for the technical high school during the event. Interest in technical education seems to be building in students across the Valley.

Ben Eveland, principal at the Mat-Su Career and Technical High School, said the school is maxed out on applicants for the 2008-2009 school year. Eveland said even with some hurdles to get into the school — an application, interview and other prerequisites — students are lining up to get in the doors.

Whether or not those students are looking toward a career in the trades is uncertain, but Eveland said the school can at least give them the training they need to be successful regardless of their post-high school education.

“Folks really get hung up on college-bound or not college-bound,” Eveland said. “It’s not about that, it’s about the training.”

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