Charlotte’s Olympic High School opens advanced manufacturing facility

What Olympic High School students can manufacture is nearly limitless.

On April 13, the $200,000 Bosch Rexroth Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Center opened in the former ROTC classroom. Thanks in part to an $80,000 grant from the namesake company, the room has been rewired for manual and computerized mills and lathes. The program is among a growing number of school partnerships with Central Piedmont Community College and area advanced manufacturing companies.

“We’re all sitting at the table together,” said Mike Realon, Olympic’s career and community development coordinator. “We want them to see us in high school as part of the talent pipeline.”

Industry-standard equipment sits at the heart of the addition. The technology will move to a facility scheduled to open in August 2016. Engineering students and robotics team members are getting a look at the tools they’ll be using.

“It’s not your mom and pop’s manufacturing,” Realon said. “It’s not textiles. It’s not apparel. It’s a whole new world.”

Business partnerships aren’t new at Olympic. The school has juniors and seniors making $10 an hour sitting in class, part of an apprenticeship program that has top manufacturing students earning above average pay straight out of high school. Manufacturing companies sit on an ad hoc committee that helps guide the Olympic program.

“There are 6,000 unfilled advanced manufacturing jobs (in Charlotte),” Realon said. “They just can’t find talent.”

The new equipment includes manual lathes and mills. But the stars are the computer-controlled machines.

“The most skilled and best paid ones are going to be the ones who can program,” Realon said.

Freshmen Marina Klimova and Christine Chee take engineering classes and have three years ahead of them with the new equipment. Both participate on the robotics team, which will no longer have to travel to nearby manufacturing plants.

“I’m looking at different careers, and this looks pretty interesting,” Klimova said. “It was very interesting making everything 3-D.”

Charlotte manufacturers make everything from mega generators to door hinges. The Olympic program aims to give students a head start in approaching those companies for jobs.

“It’s more of what real life is,” Chee said. “It gives us an idea of what we’d be doing.”

Her brother, Eric, is a junior who spent four afternoons last week visiting manufacturing sites. More than a dozen students a week try out and are recruited by companies, often leading to paid summer internships or apprenticeship opportunities where companies pay for continued education.

“I love working with my hands,” Eric Chee said. “And a free college, I liked that. Everything about it looked good to me.”

The Olympic program is designed to benefit students who go directly from Olympic into manufacturing, but also those who enroll in two-year and four-year programs in the field.

“Our principle behind it is, how much better will that engineer become after having this as a foundation to actually utilize in their studies and have it refer back to what they’re learning in the classroom?” said Steve Adamczyk, one of the instructors training students on the new equipment.

Olympic has other programs matching economic growth areas with student instruction, using advanced manufacturing as the model. Having students reach their personal and economic growth potential is a mantra for the school.

“There’s a lot of stuff you can teach,” Realon said. “It’s about what’s most relevant.”

This story was originally published April 16, 2015 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Charlotte’s Olympic High School opens advanced manufacturing facility."