Mount Sentinel Secondary School of South Slocan, BC, is one of the recipients of Hypertherm’s Spark Something Great educational grant.
Mount Sentinal was one of 12 school programs selected for the grant and the only Canadian school. There were more than 100 applications from across North America representing public schools, vocational schools, and colleges.
Now in its eighth year, the Spark Something Great grant program is designed to support the next generation of metalworkers by ensuring students train on the equipment found in workplaces. Each of the 12 schools will receive a Hypertherm Powermax45 XP plasma system and in-person training from a Hypertherm industrial cutting expert.
“We continue to see strong interest in our grant program as schools grapple with limited budgets and increasing enrollment,” said Betsy Van Duyne, who manages Hypertherm’s educational program. “Many of the schools we received applications from are trying to teach 100, 200, and even 300 students with a single—and often very old—plasma cutter. Many schools have no plasma at all. Although we cannot award a plasma system to every deserving school, we are grateful for the opportunity to give more students an opportunity to cut, gouge, and mark metal with a Powermax45 XP.”
In addition to its annual grant program, Hypertherm provides educational discounts to schools and students, and offers educators its “Plasma Cutting Technology: Theory and Practice” curriculum as a free download. To date, thousands of teachers have acquired the lesson plans helping standardize the teaching of plasma cutting to students in North America and beyond. Hypertherm also offers ProNest for Education, a free program that places ProNest CAD/CAM nesting software in schools using CNC applications.
Hypertherm plasma and OMAX waterjet cutting products are engineered and manufactured for use by companies around the world to build ships, airplanes, and railcars, construct steel buildings, fabricate heavy equipment, and more.
