A secondary school in Windsor, Ont. has been named a recipient of Hypertherm’s 2021 Spark Something Great educational grant.
Vincent Massey Secondary is one of 12 schools to be selected for the grant program, which is now in its seventh year. Each grant recipient receives the latest plasma technology so the next generation of metalworkers can train on the equipment found in workplaces.
“Increasing enrollment coupled with tight budgets means schools are tasked with teaching greater numbers of students with fewer resources,” says Betsy Van Duyne, who manages Hypertherm’s educational program. “Many schools have no plasma systems at all, and others are using machines that are 15 to 20 years old and in very bad shape. Although we cannot award a plasma system to every deserving school, we are thankful that a meaningful number of students now have an opportunity to cut, gouge, and mark metal with a Powermax45 XP.”
This year’s winning schools were selected from a pool of 231 applicants representing high schools, vocational schools and colleges from throughout the U.S. and Canada. Each of the 12 schools will receive a Hypertherm Powermax45 XP plasma system and in-person training from a Hypertherm industrial cutting expert.
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.
This year’s grant recipients are:
- Bluestone High School – Skipwith, VA
- Clark County Area Technology Center – Winchester, KY
- Felicity-Franklin High School – Felicity, OH
- George Stevens Academy – Blue Hill, ME
- Iron Eagle Welding Academy – Stockton, MO
- Morrilton High School – Morrilton, AR
- North American Trade School – Baltimore, MD
- South Carolina School of Welding, LLC – Beech Island, SC
- Spotswood High School – Penn Laird, VA
- Terre Haute North Vigo High School – Terre Haute, IN
- University of Tennessee at Martin – Martin, TN
- Vincent Massey Secondary – Windsor, ON
