Inside IALR

Career Exploration in 73 Middle Schools

• Institute for Advanced Learning and Research

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Let's hear from Jake Taylor, Technical and Training Manager of the Great Opportunities in Technology and Engineering Careers (GO TEC®) program managed by IALR. GO TEC is an innovative career initiative providing middle school students across Virginia with engaging, hands-on experiences in technology, manufacturing and engineering careers. 

Jake shares how GO TEC rapidly expanded from a pilot program in Danville and Pittsylvania County to over 50 middle schools statewide, with further growth anticipated. He explains the strategic approach to maintaining consistency while addressing regional industry differences and details the logistical complexities involved in equipping classrooms, training educators and ensuring continuous program improvement.

Highlights include:

  • What is GO TEC? (00:36)
  • Rapid statewide growth (01:42)
  • Hands-on career exploration (04:00)
  • Partnering across Virginia (05:43)
  • Supporting teachers and classrooms (14:38)
  • Bridging the high school gap (23:54)
  • STEM Innovator of the Year Award (27:00)

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research serves as a regional catalyst for economic transformation in Southern Virginia. Our services, programs and offerings are diverse, impactful and far reaching.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of Inside IALR. Thanks for joining us today. This is a fun one. Somehow, Jake Taylor, who is our technical and training manager for our GoTech program, has not been on this podcast yet.

Speaker 2:

I've dodged you pretty good over the last few months, Caleb.

Speaker 1:

So we have Jake here to tell us all about GoTech. So thanks for being here, Jake.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Quick overview of GoTech first and then you can we'll get into kind of your role and how this program's growing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So GoTech stands for great opportunities in technology and engineering careers A fancy way of saying. We embed programs in middle schools across the state that get students excited, engaged, exposed to and give them meaningful hands-on experiences in a variety of career pathways, and these career pathways have been identified by an organization that we partner with as being very important for economic development, sustainability and the state as a whole. So the whole idea is to give them a meaningful experience so they can find out what they like, what they don't like, let them know what income potential is possible for these careers. The careers we focus on are higher than average pay, so we're trying to get students excited and thinking about those opportunities. But that's kind of in a nutshell what the Go Tech program does. We started at the middle school level with the idea that they will have an experience throughout their educational pathways. So from middle school all the way to graduation, post-secondary opportunities.

Speaker 1:

You've been in this program for five years now. That's right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a little over five years.

Speaker 1:

I know when you started this was was I mean basically a baby pilot program that started for danville and pittsylvania county. I know this year, this academic year, we're talking 52 middle schools. That's, that's what it's in currently, and then next year you guys have been saying the number 73, 73 yeah, 73 is projected tell us a little bit about how do you take that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I guess that that model that was created in the middle school level here in Danville in Pennsylvania, where it's still in all of the schools here, and then expand that out to not so in 2019, when I started, with the Institute as a training coordinator.

Speaker 2:

My role was training the teachers, installing the equipment, troubleshooting equipment, providing instructional support, developing curriculum. We spent a lot of time in those early years, you know, doing those things, supporting teachers, recognizing that you know this program is only going to be strong if our student outcomes are strong and the only way that that takes place is if we're supporting the teachers correctly. So a lot of effort went into making sure that we were doing those things to support teachers, to make sure that they could do the job we needed them to do. But yeah, so, thinking back to two pilot schools which ended up being three prior to my onboarding here at the Institute, and how we grew from those two to six, to 13, to 18, to, a couple years later, 52, where we're at now, it's been a really nice journey. I look back on it and I'm kind of proud of where it's come and I look forward to what we have in store for us in the future.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk a little bit more and we'll for us in the future. I want to talk a little bit more and we'll get back. We'll get more to the growth. I want to. I want to talk about that some more too, but I want to get back a little bit to the model. So it's basically and I actually went out a few weeks ago to you, helped me, you know, set up a time to go out to one of the middle school classrooms to take some pictures and interact with the students and I mean, basically, these students are getting super hands-on experiences. That's the whole idea is that it's whether it be robotics or welding or automation or precision machining or indoor, all of these different career fields the whole idea is that it's very hands-on. I guess kind of what's the thought process behind that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we want to make sure that in all the career paths we address that we're meeting all of these the goals for the model to have. So we want there to be instruction about, you know, the types of jobs that they can have inside those career paths, the education experience that they need to enter those careers at different levels. So it's not all about entry level, it's not all about management level or bachelor degree level type positions. It's showing entry points at multiple levels and so then they can make informed decisions about you know how long do they need to go to school to make X amount of money so they can start thinking through those things. For the hands-on part, you know every single instructional module that we have has an identified piece of equipment with it that is industry identified or relevant in those pathways. So we make sure that students are introduced to that equipment, understand what it's like to interact with it, talk about really what does a day in the job look like for those particular career pathways.

Speaker 1:

So we're not giving them misinformation, we're making sure that it's very relevant to what they would experience and if they went into those career paths having gone in those classrooms, it's so cool to see sixth, seventh, eighth graders playing with robots and playing with the Haas CNC machines, which are, I mean, that's what you're going to find out in industry. I've heard you guys talk about that all the time. How it's, these are tools that industry helped identify, that. These are the brands that should be in here. These are the types of equipment I guess, to keep going with that. You know the GoTech model. Who are, I guess? Who is involved? I know, obviously, the Institute. We kind of are the main administrators of this program, but who are all the different partners that help make this program successful?

Speaker 2:

That's right. So, as the program expanded inside of our current region and the Danville footprint, ilr has been the driving force for that. As we've moved out into different regions of the state, we recognize that it was not practical, nor was it feasible for institute-based staff, danville-based employees, to be aware of the ecosystems of these regions, the political pitfalls of these regions and and and you know, know all of the partners that it's important to uh, you know partner with, with their roles inside of these regions. So, as we've done this work and moved across the state, we've partnered with what we call in region coordinating entities. We like acronyms in education, so we call them IRCEs.

Speaker 2:

Too many acronyms here Way too many acronyms and we make them up daily, sometimes just as a little side joke. But in different regions of the state where we've gone to we've kind of reached out and tried to find who's going to be that key player to help us continue this work and expand that work in their region. A lot of times it's organizations who are familiar with educational programs. They may be community-based or they may be more higher ed-based, but that's kind of the variety that we've seen so far across the state in terms of who we partner with. But in Southwest Virginia we partner with EO and that's the former United Way Southwest Virginia. They recently had had kind of a rebranding and a split of programming. So EO is our partner in Abington, virginia. They house our remote staff that are doing our work in Region 1. They host our training lab in Region 1.

Speaker 2:

And in different regions of the state, if you go all the way to Richmond in our Richmond area we partner with CCAM, the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing. It's located in Disputana in Prince George County, virginia, and also they house our staff. They house a training lab there. They help us map out school divisions that are interested, find funding sources, write grants to fund those middle school labs In Region 5, which is the Hampton Roads Newport News area. It's been ODU and we have our training lab is at a location currently called Brooks Crossing. It's a facility in Newport News owned by the city and we're currently in the process of moving that training lab. So we're landing a new home at the Penn Center, which is on the campus of Peninsula Community College, also in Newport.

Speaker 1:

New Hampton Awesome, and I know you mentioned you know working with a lot of different partners. I know GoVirginia has been a driving funder for a lot of this Talk. I guess talk a little bit about that and then some of the other partners involved as well.

Speaker 2:

When I was first hired in 2019, I came in in the first year of a three-year competitive grant that seeded the program in Region 3, and it also funded a lab in Region 4, which is now in CCAM's coverage area, and it funded a lab in Region 1, which is in coverage area, and it funded a lab in region one, which is in uh eo's coverage area in region one but um in go virginia, they um.

Speaker 1:

They provided all of the funding to initially staff and scale the program in region three and those two programs just on the outskirts of region three which, for those listening that don't know, region three is 15 localities that include danville, pennsylvania county and kind of the surrounding localities in all directions except south, because that's North Carolina.

Speaker 2:

That's right. It goes as far west as Patrick County, as far east as Mecklenburg County and on the northern kind of boundaries of Amelia, buckingham, cumberland. That's all part of Region 3. So, yeah, govirginia has been a great partner in the initial startup of the program and they continue to fund our expansion into the middle schools with regional per capita requests. So, without getting too deep in it, govirginia has a couple different buckets of money. They have per capita money that's available for programs that are very specific to their region. There's a certain amount of money awarded to programs based on the population. That's what the per capita bucket's for. Then they have a competitive budget Some of our grants. Where it crosses multiple regions, they would qualify for different competitive grants. We've been able to utilize both funding mechanisms from GoVirginia and we look forward to utilizing those in the future as well.

Speaker 1:

And I know that funding is important because the equipment is not cheap. You know you guys aren't giving students cheap equipment to play with. This is the real deal, that they're getting real hands-on experiences. That, as you said in the beginning, obviously the idea is to give that awareness and excitement level and-on experiences. That, as you said in the beginning, obviously the idea is to give that awareness and excitement level. That then and then show them how, if they were interested in pursuing that, where to go from there. But talk a little bit about I know the equipment is the same across all of the places, but talk about how how the program is different in Southwest Virginia versus in Virginia Beach and even from school to school. I know it kind of varies from school to school how this is rolled out.

Speaker 2:

I guess kind of piggybacking on your model question too, to kind of talk about those differences, is one of the things that we've discussed a lot internally with the model is how do we maintain consistency in the program but also allow for those regional differences when there's industry sectors that are vastly different across the state of Virginia? How do we respond to the needs that are very specific to those? And we've done that by a couple different ways. We have specific modules so we will adopt new modules if we find out that there is an explicit need for that new module if it maps to one of the industry sectors in a new region of GoVirginia, if our current programming does not meet what we feel and what other industry and we go through a lot of vetting processes with our content to where, if it doesn't meet what it should, we'll go back and we'll develop a new module to kind of meet those needs.

Speaker 2:

In some instances and I'll give you a specific it's like manufacturing across the state. So there are different manufacturing sectors identified as being regionally important across the state. But when we look down into the middle school experience, what the students are doing in our manufacturing engineering module experience, what the students are doing in our manufacturing engineering module. There's a lot of opportunity inside that module where it's the fundamental concepts and skills in manufacturing and those will transcend into the regional differences and it may be just using the right vocabulary and making sure we're introducing students to pharmaceutical manufacturing, if they're in Region 4, the greater Richmond area. Maritime, if they're in Region 5, thinking of the shipyard and everything associated with maritime, and then other sectors across the state. For Region 1, it's food and beverage manufacturing. So inside the model there's consistency and then there's also opportunity for regional differences based on specific need.

Speaker 1:

What does the actual student experience look like? Because I know that can vary too, depending on school capacity, teacher capacity, how many students can even go through it?

Speaker 2:

So on average our classrooms have about 20 students per section. But it depends on a lot of things that you mentioned Grade level, how long are their grading periods, how long is the class? Is it a 45 minute class, 60 minutes, 70 minute, 75, 90. We have a lot of different flavors across the state because schools get to decide their calendar, they get to decide their master schedule. So what we have that you know student experience could be nine modules. So nine modules is our model and in our lowest dosage of that, a student would receive a module per week. So five days at 45 minutes. That is on the lowest dosage of our model. The highest dosage of our model would be four weeks at 45 minutes inside of a module. So that could be some of the disparity we see across the state. And it's all just how schools do their scheduling, grading periods, all the things that you know schools have the autonomy to do and that's how we can help, you know, map our resource into their school.

Speaker 1:

And I know a lot of the work that you guys do is making sure that those experiences obviously they're going to differ a little bit depending on how much time, but that those experiences, those modules, remain the same across the entire state and across all those different divisions and time constraints and things like that. What I really want to talk to you about, though, is you went from a training coordinator, where you were responsible for training a few teachers for a few schools, to now you are sort of overseeing the implementation of all of this different technology and training. I would assume there's hundreds of how many teachers are we talking?

Speaker 2:

Right now. So in our 52 schools we have some schools that have multiple teachers. I think the last count I had was 68 teachers currently in our program. Okay, so in our 52 schools we have some schools that have multiple teachers. I think the last count I had was 68 teachers currently in our program.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so currently 68 teachers, obviously about to be a lot more if we're adding 21 schools next school year. What kind of goes into that process of you and your team implementing, maintaining this technology and then also training these educators?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we outline a lot of our best practices. So we have a training plan for new teachers that we use as kind of our guide when we start engaging with new teachers. So you know, there's everything that goes into making a training successful and we have agendas and we have pacing and everything that we use for our trainings across the state. But that gets kind of very specific into the training. One of the things we also do is we track how we train our teachers. So if you picked a singular teacher in our program, we could tell you every time they've been trained what topics were covered, who trained them, what day it was on. So we are very diligent in making sure that we keep track of when we train teachers, what we train them on and all of the things, and that way we can, you know, identify gaps, respond to those gaps to make sure that we're providing the best support we can to these teachers. So you know, there's the training side and how we track training. There's the ordering.

Speaker 2:

So when you think about expanding a program, like you said, the equipment's not cheap. There's a lot of different equipment that goes into it. So we utilize a lot of vendors, so we maintain relationships with our vendors to be able to leverage bulk buying. We maintain relationships with them to where they'll let us know when a price is getting ready to go up. That way, if're getting ready to purchase equipment but we haven't finalized processing, get it in before this date and you might save some money.

Speaker 2:

So we want to be really good stewards of Go Virginia money, which ultimately is taxpayer money, so we take that job very seriously. So we maintain a lot of different documents to make sure we streamline those processes across the state and any chance we have to where we can make something better. That continuous improvement that you see in manufacturing, we utilize that in a lot of our processes in Go Tech as well. So we have four training coordinators that report to me. I'm fortunate to work with a great team, but, yeah, we have a training coordinator that's stationed in each region and, like you said, we do have one position. It is posted. So, uh, yeah, if anyone's interested, I'll use this as a chance for a plug, maybe, if which location is that yeah, region four at ccam, our region four training coordinator.

Speaker 2:

Uh, we just reposted the position. We made a few changes uh to the to the posting uh, but that's now uh live the ILR's website, ilrjobs, so you can find that and if interested, please do apply. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's just really cool that you and your team is basically responsible for, yeah, implementing this technology. I'm sure teachers are calling you guys all the time with. I mean, we're talking at least 10 machines or 10 pieces of equipment in each classroom, right?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's a lot more than that. A lot more than that. What's?

Speaker 1:

our number.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we probably have. If you had pieces of technology, a number, it's well over 100. In each classroom. Oh yeah, If you count every Arduino Uno, every robot, every machine, 3d printer, laser cutter, it's well over 100 pieces of technology, and that doesn't even count the supporting software that goes with it. Right? So it's a system of you know making sure we support that full implementation of the right softwares to manipulate the equipment and everything they need to effectively deliver instruction and the students you know get that instruction.

Speaker 1:

So how often are there teachers calling you saying, hey, this piece of equipment is broken. Can you help me figure out how to fix it?

Speaker 2:

It could. So it might not necessarily be broken, but we field questions daily or, you know, inquiries daily from teachers, whether it's hey, I might have got this error message and I didn't know exactly what to do, or you know, or this particular piece of equipment the last time I ran it it did this there's going to be a way that we can prioritize and move things around and talk. This is important. We need to really fix this fast, but our staff maintains constant contact with the teachers. We want them to develop a rapport with their teacher to where the teacher doesn't feel like it's a. You know that they feel comfortable asking for help. We want to. We want the teacher to know we're here to support them and we want them to ask for help when they need help. We don't want them to sit with a piece of equipment that's not able to be used that a student could be using to get a meaningful experience. We want to get that piece of equipment back online so the teachers can go back to teaching.

Speaker 1:

How are these teachers selected? Because all the teachers in the Go Tech program don't directly work for Go Tech. They work for the school division. So how are these teachers chosen?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's one of those. Julie calls it a sticky wicket. So Julie, our VP of advanced learning here, she always talks about sticky wickets. So yeah, as a partner, we're not a supervisor of the teacher, we're a partner of the school division. We're a partner of that teacher. So what we try to make sure is we just keep an open line of communication. We outline the roles. You know, when we partner with a school division, there is an agreement in place between GO Tech, ilr and that school division. It's a MOU and in that MOU the roles of each entity are outlined and so we make sure we communicate that so everybody knows what their roles are. And then we just try to support them the best we can, develop that rapport with the instructor and respond to the need.

Speaker 1:

What's your over five years your best story from working with, whether it be you know technology, trying to try to set up the technology in a classroom or a last minute something broke with the teacher. You know what's what's. What's the best story we got.

Speaker 2:

We fielded questions with teachers and you know teachers when they're thinking about all the instruction that they have to do, all the things when students come through the door, sometimes it's some simple things that are just forgotten. It could be the simplest things and I'll give you a prime example. Is you know, get a call, this piece of equipment's not working. I've tried everything, I press the button, nothing happens. I've done everything. Could be as simple as is it plugged in. So we always start super simple. You know we've had instances and then the teachers they'll get. You know they might get embarrassed but it's not a big deal. They're focused on a lot of things in their day and if we can take any of those off of them, we're providing levels of support that we're we should be providing.

Speaker 2:

We've had, we've had instances where things weren't plugged in or pieces of equipment like the milling machine has multiple power plugs. Well, if you plug in the controller but you don't plug in the actual milling machine itself, the controller boots up and you get all kinds of error messages. You're like whoa, and those error messages are just a result of both machines not having power at the same time. I'm trying to think of some funnies, I guess you know we have a competition each year and we do have a team that always comes dressed up in costume and I think that surprised us a little bit that first year. But they're full of spirit. You know school spirit. The teacher's very spirited and they come fully dressed up in Halloween-style costumes, full body suits of different.

Speaker 1:

That competition you mentioned, that's the robotics competition. That's in a week and a half right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, coming up April 10th here at ILR. Yeah, that's right, this will be our third one coming up, but yeah, so that's been a good one. I'm trying to think of any standout funnies.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think in each time when our training coordinators go out and assist in instruction and from my previous experiences as assisting in instruction there's always some student feedback you get that you didn't necessarily expect, and I think that's what's unique about middle school teachers and their experiences with their students, and that middle school age group is tough. So you gotta, you gotta know to expect the unexpected. And then that's something that we talk about in our group trainings all the time is, you know you put all this equipment in a classroom. You try to predict what's a middle school student going to do that could, you know, hurt themselves or hurt the equipment, or so all those best practices, you know safety and making sure the equipment lasts in the classroom. But at the end of the day, middle school students are going to do middle school student things sometimes, and that's I would say that there's probably a book of stories out there somewhere of those, and I've just forgotten some of the more you know more common ones.

Speaker 1:

To go back to the whole kind of mission of Go Tech. You know we're trying to bring awareness to these career opportunities early. You know, not introducing them in 11th grade, 12th grade, when the opportunity is already there for them for these programs, but show them early so then if they're interested, they can pursue those things. I know a big next part of this that you all have been working on is that 9th and 10th grade Generally there's a lot of good 11th and 12th grade programs, dual enrollment programs, cte programs, 9th and 10th not so much. Talk a little bit about that work you guys are doing to bridge, kind of, to bring some level of CTE or career and technical education, stem education to the 9th and 10th grade.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that 9th and 10th grade gap for CTE pathway style programs exists in a lot of, especially in a lot of your rural school divisions and your smaller school divisions where resources are not as plentiful. So some of the things that we've been fortunate to partner with with Pennsylvania County, with Danville City, with Henry County, they have each some ninth and 10th grade programming. The idea there is that that entire pathway is a continuous pathway for students. So we have them in sixth, seventh and eighth grade in Go Tech and they get all excited about a very specific career path or multiple career paths. How do we maintain that excitement to not lose them by the time it's ready to sign up for 11th and 12th grade, dual enrollment, cte programs and things of that nature? So that's the need for that continuation of experiences and it looks a little different for 9th and 10th grade depending on the local resources for those divisions. That's been one of the bigger challenges that I think all of us on the Go Tech team recognize. You know the middle school program has been one we can standardize and scale. But with ninth and 10th grade, resources vary so much that for some school divisions, like Pennsylvania County, they have a centralized facility that they utilize to provide ninth and 10th grade programming at their STEM Academy and they have two different pathways. They have a medical science pathway and they have an advanced manufacturing pathway and so that's a centralized facility. Students get bused there, they take a science course in addition to their CTE course and then they're bused back to their home school, danville City. They have a centralized facility on their campus to be able to bring students to that.

Speaker 2:

Henry County a little more unique they do have a centralized facility for their 11th and 12th grade programs, but they don't have a facility where they could centrally bus all of their feeder programs for 9th and 10th. So what they did was they embedded it in their local high schools and existing CTE programs. So there was a collection of equipment purchased through a separate grant from Grove, virginia. This was actually a Department of Defense grant. Anybody that's listening that might have heard about the ATDM program and other programs in the Manufacturing Advancement Division of ILR. You may have heard about the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program. So one of the branches of that was to fund some of these 9th and 10th grade programs locally in our region. So each of those school divisions were able to utilize some of that funding to be able to bridge that gap for 9th and 10th grade.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a really cool well one. I mean that's good that you all recognized that this is not just about the middle school, that this is, you know, to funnel all the way through and recognizing that gap, and that you guys are working on holistically. How can you do that? And I know, I mean I've heard you say it I mean now and before that that's a division by division level thing that you have to do A little more prescriptive Yep.

Speaker 1:

So I think I buried the lead here. You just won STEM Innovator of the. Year from Starbase Victory, based in Portsmouth. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so for the last three years I've been fortunate enough to partner with Portsmouth City Schools and their Starbase Victory program that also supports their city school system. It's kind of a supplemental to Portsmouth City Schools. But in the past three years we've done a variety of mobile lab engagements our GoTech mobile lab, which is that 46-foot-long freightliner decked out in all the things GoTech. We've taken it down there and enriched different summer school programs providing math enrichment. So when you think GoTech you don't necessarily think of math class, but math concepts are abound in a lot of the activities that we do. But we did some robotics activities that would enrich some of the weaknesses of the performance on their Math 6 SOL.

Speaker 2:

So we did some targeted remediation with students at a summer school one year utilizing the bus and the robotics equipment on the bus. The following year we supported a robotics camp down there for their STAR-based program and it was in partnership with the Children's Museum of Portsmouth. So the bus was used to build robots and test robots on. But our competition fields that we reuse each year from our VEX competition we execute camps with them. So those were inside of the Children's Museum and camp participants bounced from the bus to the museum, and it all culminated to a competition at the end of the week.

Speaker 2:

In the middle of all of this programming with the bus in the last three years is the people of Portsmouth work together with their CTE advisory boards, city councils, starbase, the city school system, all the way to the mayor. Everyone was involved with figuring out a way to strategically enhance the outcomes for their students and they identified Go Tech as they need to put it in their school system. So currently, all three middle schools and Portsmouth City Schools have a GoTech program, and so, by all of these things and the work of the Institute as a whole and my GoTech team, they singled me out for the award, which I was happy to accept. But yeah, it was an honor being down there to accept the STEM Innovator of the Year Award from Starbase Victory Academy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a cool title. You should put that on your, on your linkedin name. You know some people put like mass, you know, phd or something behind their name on linkedin.

Speaker 1:

You just stem innovator of jake taylor, stem innovator of the year. Yeah, um, I think that that's a really cool example of you know, traditionally our service region is southern virginia and that has clearly expanded beyond that with a lot of what we do. And seeing that, you know in Portsmouth, all the way in the coast, that you know we're being recognized. You're being recognized for the work of this really, really innovative middle school education program. That's all the questions that I have. You know, I think this program is so cool I love telling people about. When I tell people about what the Institute does, first you say a lot and then, right then you start talking about specifics and I think this one I always come back to because it's such like people can wrap their heads around this as being a very needed, cool, exciting type of program.

Speaker 2:

And it has elements of multiple departments here. You know it's, it's, it's it's manufacturing advancement education, and you know our manufacturing advancement team does that with adult learners and ATDM. We just happen to have it embedded in the AL department, or advanced learning department, because it's in K-12. So there, you know, early on there was talk like which, which division should this even land in as a program? And so you know, we, we work across programs. So well, I don't think it matters, but you know it's, you know it's been one of those interesting things.

Speaker 1:

Good luck training however many new teachers you guys have coming on board in the next several months and bringing all the equipment in, and that sounds like a logistics. I don't want to say nightmare, because it's not going to be a nightmare, but that sounds like a lot of a lot of fun to figure out.

Speaker 2:

A lot of fun. A lot of fun. Yeah, some of the growing pains. You know inflation and tariffs and you write grants and the timeline from when you write the grants to where you're awarded those grants. You know, sometimes a lot of time has gone by and a lot of pricing can change in six months. So we try to write some wiggle room inside of these grants to anticipate those changes. So lots of strategies and best practices, but continuous improvement. You know that manufacturing concept of continuous improvement it's all in our processes with as we move this program forward in Virginia.

Speaker 1:

Well, Jake, you're doing great work.

Speaker 2:

Mr.

Speaker 1:

STEM innovator of the year.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for being here.