Eagle Manufacturing
~ story and photos by Bob Gustin
Meeting Expectations
Left to right: Chris Townsend( Advisor), Haley Fowler, Autumn Bryant.
As Brown County High School students head back to classes this fall, some of them are going into a program which aims to give them real-world work experience, advanced training more typical of college-level courses, and problem-solving skills they can use for the rest of their lives.
About a fifth of the high school students are part of the Eagle Manufacturing program or are preparing to enroll in it. And when they graduate, the goal is for them to be immediately employable if that’ s the path they choose.
Students get training on specific job-related tasks, including engineering, programming, design, administration and operation of complex machinery. But more importantly, they learn how to thrive in a work environment.
Though one goal of the program is to get it to be selfsupporting, advisor Chris Townsend says the most important aspiration is to produce students who are workforce ready, self-sufficient, and able to solve problems given the resources they have at hand.“ If they can do that, they can do anything,” he said.
Students are encouraged to overcome problems on their own, and only seek advice from advisors if they are unable to do so, Townsend said. Other advisors in the program are Dean Keefauver and Cheyenne Dinsmore. A former Eagle Manufacturing student, Dinsmore teaches at the high school as she continues her education.
Eagle Manufacturing began in 2018 in the high school building, then moved to remodeled space in the former Nashville elementary school building when schools were consolidated. A private donation funded the remodeling and equipping of the facility. Though the startup costs for a program are high, Townsend expects growth and efficiency will eventually increase revenue, making it less expensive to operate than more traditional high school sequences.
“ Our goal is to teach, not make money,” he said.
The high school program is not as efficient as a private enterprise, he said, because they are working in non-ideal conditions, including 100 percent turnover every year, and 47-minute work shifts, the length of class sessions. But he said the culture of the program is important, providing a family environment where students support one another.
Students in the program function as a business, providing goods and services to private companies and individuals at contracted rates. Students communicate
24 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2024