Jonathan Hughes: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to the MEFA Podcast. My name is Jonathan Hughes and I’ll tell you up front, if you’re listening to our show today only and not watching the video as well, you’re only going to get half the story. So this is our most video heavy episode yet. We filmed on location at Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical High School.

And you know, I always love highlighting tech schools because of all the variety that they offer and the different opportunities and tracks are always so fascinating to me. This one is even more so. It’s a technical and agricultural school, so we’re going to focus on two specific programs. And two students in those programs.

One is a veterinary science student. This high school not only teaches [00:01:00] veterinary sciences, they actually operate in a fully functional angel animal hospital on campus where students can work and learn. And so we’re going to be talking to one of those students and yes, there will be a dog. So I’m very excited to shamelessly feature a dog in one of our episodes.

The other program is the Engineering and manufacturing program, and we’ll be talking to one of the teachers who’s going to go over all the educational and career opportunities that the program can offer. And of course, we’ll also be talking to a student in the advanced manufacturing track and he’ll be telling us.

All about the resources and the machines that students can use. He’ll be going over the curriculum and demonstrating some of the robotic equipment that he actually helped to program. So that’s right. Robots and dogs in this episode. And just to let you know, if you do want to watch the episode. You can go to MEFA’s YouTube channel, you can go to mefa.org to view the video of the episode.

And if [00:02:00] you’re a Spotify customer they’ve begun posting video episodes of the podcast as well, and not just audio podcasts. I could not be more excited to show you this episode, and I could not have been more impressed with these students and everything that they’ve been able to do at Essex North Shore.

So, enough of my talk, I’ll be breaking in now and again anyways. Let’s start the show and let’s start with the Advanced Manufacturing program and meet our student guest.

Michael: Hello, my name is Michael Solata and I am here in Advanced Manufacturing at Essex Tech. I started here as a freshman and I’ve had a great time here over the past like three, three years, almost three, three and a half years now. So Advanced Manufacturing is all a program about the modern manufacturing process and.

Yeah, most manufacturing is done through machines these days. A lot of the older manufacturing, it is like welding, you know, you have metal parts you put, be able to put them [00:03:00] together. But advanced manufacturing, we do more than that because we have these machines. Mostly we focus on a milling machine or a lathe, and what they do is they cut down machine down parts to very, very precise tolerances.

So. Usually we work with like plus or minus 1000th. And what a thousandth is is it’s 0.001 inches. And the equipment that we have is really good for high school. It’s, we’ve got like a lot of machines here. Most colleges don’t even have this stuff. 

Jonathan Hughes: Michael is going to give us an example and, and demonstrate how one of these advanced manufacturing machines work.

Michael: All right, so this is a coordinate measuring machine, often abbreviated as CMM, and it’s very special because you could take a part and you could measure it one by one, but that’s not gonna, that’s not going to be efficient, and that’s not going to be [00:04:00] repeatable. Someone could easily make a mistake. I talked about how carts could be easily machined to like plus or minus one thousands.

What’s great about this is that it could check to see if it’s actually plus or minus one thousands. So what this does is it has this thing called a probe. And what this does is it comes down to the top surface, the bottom, the back surface just everywhere. And the software will be able to trace out the exact map of the part and be able to see if where it lands and the dimensions that it’s checking are correct.

So I’m going to run a program created by one of our students that will take this part and be able to. Measure it efficiently. So here I’m moving the probe to the sensor of the part approximate sensor, and now I need to touch off three points on the plane. The top plane enable measure so that it can moves slower and touch the probe off the surface and makes a beep to let it, you know that you’ve touched [00:05:00] it off.

And I can do it on any other two points. Those points are ideally. Need to be spread out so that it has a wider area to be able to make the plane from.

And now it just created our plane. And when we go to the left of here, we need to define two lines so that it can intersect them and make an origin point so that it knows where the part exactly is in three dimensional space. So I’m going to move the probe to the front of the part, turn on, measure, probe, and then move it to the back of the part and just touch the part. Same thing happens with the top, the front of the part.[00:06:00] 

And by this point, CNC will turn on and it will start measuring the part by itself. We can learn to make PSAR parts that precise here because like in the aerospace, medical computer, like industries, you need parts to be that precise or else they won’t function because the mechanical and engineering properties are so un intolerable of anything.

A little bit imprecise. That having this machinery and having this cool technology and being able to make it at this age level is so valuable. 

Jonathan Hughes: And so how did you get interested in this? 

Michael: So, I originally was a in it actually, I wasn’t really, wasn’t in this shop and I learned a lot of software skills. I’m just a computer guy.

I’ve always been that computer guy. But I’ve also like very much been interested in the engineering process of just how things are made, whether it’s computer hardware. Or just random things just to see how they’re made [00:07:00] and what really made this shop appealing to go into, to switch into was that it kind of connects a lot of skills because what you have is you have your software that plans out the part you, you have your CAD program, you have your CAM program, which is computer aided manufacturing, and that plans out your part.

It’s all math. It’s all mathematical, but it’s like really fun because. It isn’t just the math learning in class, it’s applied mathematics and you get to see how the geometry of things align together. And that skill I’ve always had, because I’ve always done 3D graphics, and being able to see that apply to like actual and real manufacturing is huge.

And then there’s your hands-on portion, which is having the, being on the machine, being hands on and just being active and not sitting at a computer. That mix, that hybrid of like a white collar and a blue collar experience is really what makes this industry so good. And that’s what made me really gear towards advanced manufacturing.

Jonathan Hughes: Now, to hear more about what students [00:08:00] can learn and what they can become from the engineering and manufacturing courses. We talked to Robert Trottier, one of Michael’s teachers of Advanced Manufacturing. 

Bob Trottier: My name is Bob Trottier. I’m the, I’m the lead instructor here in the advanced manufacturing program at Essex Tech.

Well, there’s a lot of different avenues a student can go, go into leaving a program like this. At the, at the very least, it could be an entry level position running a machine, or it could be a program position, as you saw with the robot or the CMM. Yeah, we will get to the robot, I promise. And quality control.

You can go become a design engineer, a manufacturing engineer, an industrial engineer, mechanical engineer. I’m going to say about half of our students go off to college. Okay. They have such a leg up on anybody else. Because they have this background. 

Jonathan Hughes: And so what about Michael? What are his immediate plans?

Michael: So I’ve already applied to my colleges. I want to be a mechanical engineer. And what’s great about this job is that you could definitely get out of here being a machinist, a CNC operator, machinist set up [00:09:00] guy, anything. But you could also be an engineer because Mr. Trottier and just everyone here works with us on such.

Conceptual skills that engineers use on a daily basis, that you could definitely be an engineer. For example, engineers, they have to learn all about the manufacturing process because when they design a part, they have to, they have to design exactly how it would be to spec of manufacturing. And because we learn about the process here, it helps you as an engineer.

Bob Trottier: I tell the students, there’s three things you get paid for. All right? You get paid for what you do. You get paid for what you know. And you get paid for responsibility, and I want you to leave here in the minimum in that middle category, what you know. Okay. What you know, can be a wide range. Okay. Which means I always tell them, the more you know, the more you get paid. Every student will learn how to program and set up every machine in this program. 

Bob Trottier: They all can leave here. Be [00:10:00] with deployable skills. If you want to get into a company you like, you like quality engineering, you saw the CMM, you get proficient at that.

You understand the geometric tole, well, you work for a couple years. It’s an easy six figure job plus, okay? You want to be the manufacturing engineer that’s program the robot and lights out manufacturing another six plus figure job. Any programming of all these machines if you are in charge of the machine.

Okay. And, and the process. Okay. There’s six figure jobs.

Jonathan Hughes: Okay. How about, since we’re talking about matching students up with jobs, how is that done? 

We do have co-op programs. So right now our senior class most of them are on co-op right now, and they’re all at different companies in the area. Okay. They’re getting, they’re learning those soft skills that are needed in the industry.

Right. Be on time, you know, make sure your phone isn’t around. Get learning how to get along with other people at work. All right. Those jobs, co-op jobs can turn into full-time jobs if they choose to stay there. Okay. 

Jonathan Hughes: But what about regular high school classes that students have to take in addition to their trade? How is that managed? 

Michael: We have academics here, and I actually think that this school does one of the best in academics, despite being a shop school. I think that this school does [00:11:00] a really good job with their academic curriculum. 

Jonathan Hughes: Mm-hmm. 

Michael: We only have half time, so we only are in academics half the time. However, it feels like to me, honestly, with my experience, that I’ve learned more here than I’ve ever did previously, even with just halftime. And there’s a common myth that like the classes are going to be really fast paced. You don’t really. It’s really hard, but that’s not really true. They kind of teach it in a way where you learn everything in half time, but it’s taught in a way that’s very intuitive, so you don’t really feel that rushed.

And being able to have shop here as well is just really amazing. So every Wednesday we switch from academics to shop, and that’s just a good like balance, work-life balance because you could have academics and then. For a very short amount of time. They have shop very short amount of time, then the weekend, and then you have shop for a short amount of time, academics for a short amount of time, and it becomes just a really good cycle. It makes the year go by way too fast. 

Jonathan Hughes: Okay. Now the robot, one of my questions is about like any kind of [00:12:00] projects that you’ve done and I just learned that you helped. Design or do the software for, for this here? 

Michael: Yeah. So this robot is really cool because the purpose of it is to take these parts. So these parts here are fully machined. However some parts that would be here would not be fully machined, like these basic blocks. And the point of a CNC machine is to take these parts and machine them into the intricate parts. So here’s the maze. And my goal with this would be to machine this maze on the robot. So the robot’s purpose is to actually be able to take parts in and out of the machine without humans.

So like, I could take a part, I could open these doors and I can put it right here in this vice. However, if you’re operating a business, that won’t be the most cost effective way. So we actually program it using this thing called visual programming system. Where you can actually specify different parameters for the robot.

So it’s, it’s very intuitive and anyone [00:13:00] could learn this. It just takes practice. 

Jonathan Hughes: And, and so you helped to  design the software for this. Was this part of, like, was it a school project or was just something that was like part of a group project or was it you? 

Michael: It was just me individually. 

Jonathan Hughes: Oh, okay.

Michael: However, I think Mr. Trottier is planning to try to get more people on the project. 

Jonathan Hughes: Okay. Okay. Do you want to show us the other, do you want to show us this thing over here too? That cuts super fast, or-

Michael: Well, do you want me to run this?

Jonathan Hughes: Oh, yes, please do. Sorry. Yes. Okay. So if you’re listening, the robotic arm is swirling around and picks up a smooth metallic rectangle. Doors to the chamber open somehow, and the robotic arm places the rectangle with hand, the door shut. And now Michael is going to explain what is happening inside. 

Michael: This spring pulls the part down, it loosens the part, and then tightens the part so that way it’s nice there, spot on, accurate. Then it’ll load the probe [00:14:00] and that probe will go down, touch. The, the left of the part, which is the x axis, touch the right of the part, which is the x axis. Touch the front, then the back, which will give it its location and size so that it can accurately now machine the part, the robot’s going to pick up the part and go on to the next part.

Most schools don’t let you touch this. Like most high schools don’t let you touch this because they don’t have it. And most businesses won’t let you touch this, especially if you’re entry level, they won’t let you touch this. So being able to learn this now is such a valuable skill because this puts you higher than anyone else graduating the school.

Jonathan Hughes: So you’re going to college hopefully to study engineering and. Do you know, you know, what’s your sort [00:15:00] of dream career after that? Do you know? 

Michael: My dream career would probably be to be a mechanical engineer because I’ve, I’ve always liked how me, the mechanisms and everything interact with tension, all these different variables.

I can think of all, all the variables at once, and I could see myself designing products that help the world where everything is intricate but simple, minimalized and efficient, and they. They can be used to solve people’s daily tasks. 

Jonathan Hughes: All right, thank you, Michael. Thank you, Mr. Trottier. Now let’s head over to the Angel Animal Hospital on campus and meet our vet student.

Catherine: My name is Catherine Aguilar. I am a senior at Essex Tech and I am from Lynn, Massachusetts in the Vet Science Program. This is Zoe. She is one of our teacher’s dogs. So one of the things that really attracted me to the school and the program was that this isn’t a program that’s offered in [00:16:00] every technical school.

It was just something really interesting that stood out to me and something I want, I wanted to explore more. And it was something that I just, I was really interested in medicine, whether that be veterinary or human. So I thought this was a really good. Place for me to discover those skills and discover more about like, just medical like a medical area in general.

Jonathan Hughes: So it was the medicine that really appealed to you. It wasn’t necessarily like, I’m sure you love animals. I, but it wasn’t like a nec like, oh, I love animals. I need to work with animals. It was really medicine that drove you. 

Catherine: Yeah. I feel like this course prepares you well in a lot of areas. Just not, not just veterinary, because we learn about anatomy and.

The anatomy we learn about to understand. The veterinary side of it is human. So I feel like even if I don’t want to go into the veterinary field, it prepared me really well with knowing basic skills such as anatomy [00:17:00] and client communications and other things like that. So it’s very transferrable. 

Jonathan Hughes: So what kind of things do you learn in in vet science? What do you do? 

Catherine: So technical things we learn are. How to run a basic like lab test, such as a blood test or a urin urinalysis. We also learned animal restraint. We learned how to do blood draws and we learned how to like just be an assistant in general to the doctors and learn how to. How we can best like help them and how to aid them in what they need.

Jonathan Hughes: Now you have a dog here, obviously. Yeah. Do you have, like, do you learn about other kinds of animals? 

Catherine: Yes, we learn, because we also downstairs from our clinic area, we have exotic animals such as rabbits, Guinea pigs, birds, and reptiles. So we learned how to restrain all kinds of animals, even equine and like other farm animal loops.

It’s good to have like. A good [00:18:00] range of animals to learn on. So you’re not just focused on your typical dog and cat clinic. Mm. Because it’s something that may, it may be like the baseline, but it’s not the only animals that are out there. So I feel like this program really prepares you to go into any kind of field.

Like if you want to specialize in one animal or if you want to go and do other things, I feel like it really prepares you all. It’s really well-rounded. 

Jonathan Hughes: What is your sort of dream? Career after this. 

Catherine: My dream career would be to become an anesthesiologist. I feel like I learned that I’m really interested in anesthesia through our anesthesia unit in here when we were learning about monitoring and like what an anesthesia technician does.

And also in my co-op last year, in junior, junior year, I was at. Angel Animal Medical Center in Boston and I was in the surgery department and I got to work really close with anesthesia [00:19:00] technicians and I got to see like the tasks that they carry out and it was just something that really sparked my interest.

Jonathan Hughes: What about it? 

Catherine: So I really, I just, I love like learning a lot. So I see like they’re always constantly like doing. Like CE like lessons to learn about new drugs and how, and like how to use them and like what patients you should use them on. And I like seeing how they, like, they have to make like an anesthesia like plan prior to the patient.

Like they run different tests to see. Like whether a patient can get this kind of drug or this kind of anesthetic or whatever they may need to best keep them like healthy and at a reasonable, like, have reasonable vitals during surgery. And I also liked how especially like the anesthesiologist with like their connection with the anesthesia text, I [00:20:00] felt like it was a really good dynamic.

Like it wasn’t like, I don’t want to like put it in a bad way, but it was really like, it was really like one-on-one, like really like deep and connected. So I really like that kind of environment, like where someone could reach out to a higher authority and not feel afraid to ask about it.

And that’s just, it’s some like an environment that I thought I would really thrive in one day. 

Jonathan Hughes: And do you get to do, like, what kind of things do you get to do here as far as. You know, medical work on these animals. 

Catherine: So in my co-op I do a, most of, most of the things that I do is animal restraint and just helping like place catheters or blood draws.

So we also, we, some of the times like depends on what you’re doing that day. You might also be asked to take a patient history, so you would have to go into. Room with a client and you [00:21:00] would just ask them questions about how the patient has been doing at home, if there’s any changes into their environment or into their pet’s health and any concerns they may have.

Jonathan Hughes: What about here as part of your coursework?

Catherine: Here? 

Jonathan Hughes: Yeah. 

Catherine: So it’s kind of been a while since I’ve been here, but for my, what I can remember so we do lessons in the morning and in the afternoon we. Like, it depends on which teacher you’re with, obviously. But we may go out into the farm or downstairs with the small animals and try to apply what we learned in the lessons before into the animals downstairs, whether that be like restraining for a certain type of procedure or like nutritional, like we can go downstairs and see what type of food they’re getting fed and if it fits their health needs.

Jonathan Hughes: But this is a veterinary hospital, like a working veterinary hospital, right? 

Catherine: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Jonathan Hughes: How does that like, interact with your studies? [00:22:00] 

Catherine: I feel like this is like a really good experience to have, to have a working veterinary clinic in the school because not only does it give you like.

Occupational training, like in real life occupational training. I feel like it helps you understand beyond book work and helps you really like, make that connection into like what you’re learning and like technical training. 

Jonathan Hughes: So I want to talk about co-op in a minute, but I want to also talk about the academics here, right? Mm-hmm. So can you describe how that works? Managing sort of like your, your regular course load and then your vet science program. 

Catherine: So I think that the course, like the, the split here is a little awkward, but I feel like it really works well because you’re not in academics for a whole week and you’re not in like you’re programmed for a whole week.

[00:23:00] Like, you’re there, you’re like in academics and shop for like about half, like half and half roughly. Mm-hmm. And I feel like that really balances well because you are constantly like stimulated, you’re not always bored with the same things. So I feel like it works out pretty well for the students here.

Jonathan Hughes: And so as far as what happens when you graduate?

Catherine: Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Hughes: Are you planning to go to college or are you planning to enter the field right away? 

Catherine: I plan on going to college right away. Yeah. 

Jonathan Hughes: And so have you done your applications, are you doing your applications and all that? 

Catherine: Yeah, I’ve, I’ve pretty much done with my applications.

Jonathan Hughes: So what’s the, what’s the, your top choice? Like what’s your ideal scenario for going to college and, you know, entering it that you choosing your major and doing that stuff? Is there a top choice school or, 

Catherine: Yeah. I would really like going to Northeastern. Because similar to here, they have a co-op program and [00:24:00] I want to go into pre-med.

So I feel like their co-op, their co-op placements and like in Mass General or in like Boston Medical Center, I feel like that is also really great for like occupational training and just like having one-on-one, like. Being able to see what the field is really like. 

Jonathan Hughes: So let me ask you a question that occurred to me and I’m not sure, like, I don’t know if I should ask it, but I’m like so you said anesthesiology pre-med is this human?

Anesthesiology is. Okay, good. So I wasn’t sure. So there’s a lot of schooling then ahead of you? Potentially. 

Catherine: Yeah. Okay. 

Jonathan Hughes: And you feel like this has trained you well, obviously for that? Yeah. Is that because of the co-op program? 

Catherine: Yeah. 

Jonathan Hughes: And so when did you do co-op? 

Catherine: I started co-op late January of last year.

So during my junior year. 

Jonathan Hughes: Is it finished now or are you still on co-op? 

Catherine: I’m still on co-op. 

Jonathan Hughes: Oh, okay. 

Catherine: Until graduation. 

Jonathan Hughes: Is there anything in particular that you, other than your co-op work that [00:25:00] you are, it’s like, you know, your favorite project or favorite thing that you’ve learned or a favorite experience that you’ve had here?

Catherine: I really liked learning more of like. The lab stuff here I liked one of my like favorite things that we did during junior year, before I went on co-op was learning how to do blood smears. I thought it was like such a cool thing to do. 

Jonathan Hughes: What is it? You have to tell me? 

Catherine: So basically it’s a type of blood test.

So you would collect the patient’s blood and then you would use a pipette and then like a microscope slide and you would. Like, as in the name, you would smear the blood with another slide on the other slide, and you would you would wait, you like stain it and it goes through a process and then you would look at it under a microscope and then analyze like what type of cells are in there.

Jonathan Hughes: Are you glad that you went through this path at this school versus a more traditional high school? And is it something that you would recommend to somebody who’s interested in your field? [00:26:00] 

Catherine: I think this was a really good choice for me, even regardless, I want to do human medicine because I do feel in other technical schools or in just a normal high school, you, you don’t really have the opportunity to do so much on hands work with clients and with patients.

And I feel like, because like you don’t need a certification to be a veterinary assistant as compared to. Nursing assistant. I feel like this field opens a lot of more doors for experience and learning. 

Jonathan Hughes: Well, good luck with everything. 

Catherine: All right. Thank you. 

Jonathan Hughes: It was nice to meet you too. And thank you so much for, for helping us out.

Okay folks, that was our show. I’d like to thank everyone who is generous with their time and their assistance, and that of course includes our guests, Michael and Catherine. Robert Trottier as well, but also Jill Sawyer, who arranged the whole thing for us, connected us with our student guests and showed us around the property.

She’s the Executive Director of Career Technical and Agricultural Education and Workforce [00:27:00] Development at Essex North Shore, and the gentleman who took care of everything on filming day, Paul Crofts. Thank you, Paul. And of course, I wouldn’t even know about any of this, if not for our friend at MEFA Pathway, Jen Bento-Pinyoun.

So thanks, Jen. So listen, if you folks liked what you heard and hopefully what you saw on the show today, and you want to hear more from us or see more from us on planning, saving, and paying for college and career readiness, well then please follow the show wherever you find your podcast and please remember to leave us a good review.

I’d also like to thank our producer, Shaun Connolly. Meredith Clement, AJ Yee,, Lauren Danz, Lisa Rooney, and Christina Davidson for their assistance in posting the show. Once again, my name is Jonathan Hughes, and this has been the MEFA Podcast.