Student Consultants from South Fayette and Avonworth High Schools Partner to Solve Real-World Problems
A combined team of high school business consultants converged at the Calgon Carbon Corporation headquarters in Moon Township on March 9, 2016, to present their wellresearched and analyzed solutions to President and CEO Randy Dearth, Vice President of Human Resources Steve Nolder, and an executive team from the company.
The students received the authentic problem in mid-January during their tour of the headquarters building as part of the Global Passport Project. Calgon’ s Director of Strategic Marketing Matt Adomaitas and Head of Media and Communications Amanda Mushrush met with 30 South Fayette and 12 Avonworth consultants to provide an extensive overview of the company as well as the parameters and summary of the problem the team was being asked to solve— to determine how Calgon Carbon can best expand beyond its traditional industrial base into the consumer marketplace through the development of household odor removal products using its high-quality carbon product and technology.
The student consultants applied their science, technology and economics classroom knowledge to develop their solutions while incorporating the work-ready skills of collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking throughout their six weeks of teamwork.
Real-world problem solving has been an intricate part of South Fayette High School’ s school-to-business project-based learning partnerships that began in 2008. The goal of the district is to partner with other regional schools to expand these authentic career / workforce development programs throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. The district was thrilled to partner with Avonworth School District on the Calgon project.
The response from the Calgon business partners has been overwhelmingly positive as noted by Ms. Mushrush:“ Calgon Carbon is gratified to be part of the kind of learning opportunity that contributes to workforce development in the region and encourages the kinds of skills we seek when recruiting employees.”
There is a mutually beneficial outcome to these projects— the students gain opportunities to apply classroom learning in STEAM( Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and build workplace skills that aren’ t formally taught, from organization and planning, to creativity, collaboration, communications and critical thinking. In turn, businesses get the benefit of fresh perspectives on marketing, technical and other business challenges and often solutions they can implement in whole or in part.
South Fayette High School teachers Tom Isaac, Science, and Shawn McArdle, Economics, enhanced the consulting experience for their students as they took on the role of classroom facilitators instead of traditional teachers, thus allowing the student teams to be self-directed and motivated. In the end, the young consultants owned every part of their solutions without relying on academic influence from a teacher.
South Fayette business consultant team members were Cassandra Agostino, Courtney Blocher, Jordyn Briner, Corina Campbell, Sarah Cefalo, Natalie Chaussard, Rasaun Culberson, Taylor Delaney, Grace Gannon, Ray Harmuth, Michael Katruska, Michael Kotar, Mackenzie Litvak, Geovonie Love, Ethan Marshall, Sarah Mikesell, Michael Norcia, Marjorie O’ Kelly, Rogeli Palting, Kayla Shoup, Brianna Snider, Michaela Snider, Jenifer Stadler, Christian Stanfield, Kya Stephens, Matthew Thomas, Jessica Urksa, Noah Yaquinto, Erin Wallace and Katie Whitewood. outh Fayette
SOUTH FAYETTE TOWNSHIP SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS
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