Mobile lab considered for marketing, training

WELL-TRAVELED: High school students from Bonduel High School in Bonduel, Wis., work in an advanced-manufacturing mobile lab based at the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay. / COURTESY GERALD J. BRONKHORST
WELL-TRAVELED: High school students from Bonduel High School in Bonduel, Wis., work in an advanced-manufacturing mobile lab based at the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay. / COURTESY GERALD J. BRONKHORST

Gerald J. Bronkhorst, 45, of Suamico, Wis., trains students from six high schools in northeast Wisconsin in an advanced-manufacturing mobile lab – a model Rhode Island educators are considering emulating.
The Iraq War veteran decided to attend Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, Wis., to earn certificates in advanced manufacturing when he got back to the United States in 2006, and five years ago was hired by the college as a lab technician, he told Providence Business News in a phone interview.
For the past three years, he has worked as the mobile-lab technician with a few teachers and as many as 12 high school students at a time in the mobile lab, which travels about 50 miles within the school district and cost about $300,000, Bronkhorst said. The high schools pay about $5,000 for every two semesters of use, he said. Precise costs for the lab itself, a trailer hitched to a commercial grade pickup truck, and its operating costs were unavailable.
“If I can convince some of these kids to go out and learn a trade and get a job, that’s a huge win,” said Bronkhorst, the lab technician.
Rhode Island educators found out about a Michigan mobile lab just being implemented this summer and fall that is based on the Wisconsin model, and are actively exploring how such a vehicle might be used in connection with programs at the University of Rhode Island, the Community College of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College.
Chris Semonelli, one of several co-directors in the Newport County Mentor Co-Op, met on June 27 with URI President David M. Dooley to further the conversation. Semonelli said he focused on the collaboration between North Central Michigan College, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the Northern Lakes Economic Alliance, and a local manufacturer, Precision Edge Surgical Products Inc. of Boyne City, Mich. “What we were asking of President Dooley was for [URI] to run the program with our support from Newport County,” said Semonelli.
Specifically, Semonelli said, there needs to be a high school curriculum for advanced manufacturing using computer numerical control equipment, 3D-printers and computers.
URI is looking forward to continued discussions, said professor and School of Education Director David M. Byrd, who attended the meeting.
“Like many of our outreach programs, this may create another means to engage younger students in math and science,” he said.
Jerry Bernardini, chairman of the engineering and technology department at CCRI, who was not at the meeting, said he has been talking with Semonelli for some time about a mobile lab that could supplement the curriculum in advanced manufacturing, which was just introduced at CCRI this past fall.
The lab “would be a way of sharing reasonably expensive equipment with multiple schools,” he said.
RIC is also part of the dialogue, confirmed Laura Hart, RIC’s director of college communications.
The mobile labs’ visibility is helping illustrate the need for jobs in advanced manufacturing, according to Bronkhorst and Tom Erhart, entrepreneurship director for the Northern Lakes Economic Alliance, which covers four counties in the northern lower peninsula in Michigan.
The Michigan “fab lab,” which is comparable to Wisconsin’s, houses 13 computers, a CNC mill and a CNC lathe. It was paid for with a $350,000 grant through the state in a unique arrangement with Precision Edge, which has promised to hire 30 people, some but not all trained through the lab, within two years, said Todd Fewins, the firm’s operations manager. •

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