McKinley-ALC Awarded a Bernick's Family Foundation Grant
April 11, 2018
McKinley-ALC was awarded a $17,500 grant by the Bernick's Family Foundation to fund a project titled "McKinley-ALC Career Academy: Helping Students Transition from High School to Post-Secondary." The McKinley career project will establish robotics, drafting and design, and automotive options for students at McKinley. A small-scale robotics program was started last school year, and was well received by the students who participated. Grant funding will allow the program to be available to more students and enable the school to participate in robotics competitions. Furthermore, by having the opportunity to purchase additional robotics kits and equipment, the ratio of students to kits will be improved, thus allowing students to have increased opportunities to consistently engage and develop their robotics skills. As part of its industrial technology programming, McKinley-ALC also plans to pilot a drafting and design program. The primary focus of this curriculum is to first teach students to work with planning and design and computer-assisted design software, then to bring their drawings to life by creating prototypes and models of their designs with 3D printing technology.
The final component of this grant project is the automotive programming. Currently, a few McKinley students have the opportunity to take courses in automotive education at Apollo High School. However, the number of students expressing an interest in this career field has increased. Therefore, the staff at McKinley-ALC plans to provide general automotive courses that will allow ALC students to take the basic classes in electrical, lubrication, fuel, cooling, ignition, suspension and steering, and braking systems on site at McKinley. After completing these introductory classes, students will be able to transition to the Discovery Academy at Apollo High School. Discovery Academy is a course offered by the St. Cloud Technical and Community College that fulfills the prerequisite requirements for the certification program in automotive education.
McKinley-ALC strives to develop and foster 21st century skills in every student by providing them with a variety of tools and the hands-on experiences necessary to successfully transition to post-secondary careers.