Superintendent Communiqué Midland Public Schools

February was National Career and Technical Education (CTE) Month, and to highlight the CTE programs available at MPS, students from CTE classes spoke about their experiences at our Parent Information Committee meeting on March 8th! Click on the button below to view the recording of the meeting and learn more about CTE classes offered at MPS.

This week, we highlight the Engineering Program

MPS courses offered in Engineering:

• Introduction to Engineering Design
• Principles of Engineering
• Engineering Capstone

Featured Students:

Abigail Good (Junior), DHS; Chris Ramos (Sophomore) - DHS; Craig Hurst (Sophomore) - MHS; Alexander Horton (Sophomore) - MHS

When asked how the Engineering program has made an impact on their education, Abigail, Chris, Craig, and Alexander responded:

“It advances my skills and prepares me for the real world on how a workplace would operate. We’ve learned how to work together in groups and how to benefit from that as well as following a design process. We also use the engineering design process and learn skills that will benefit us in the workplace such as technical writing and how to make professional connections with people outside of the school system and how to use our resources to advance our work.”- Abigail Good

“I’ve learned a lot from the engineering program! I’ve learned how to use CAD to create objects and how to design things efficiently and when I see something online that I want but don’t really want to pay for it, I can create my own version in a unique way by designing it in 3D modeling. I’d say its a really good experience for anyone who has any interest in the field, and it's an easy way to get familiar with the basics.”- Chris Ramos

“A lot of what we do in the program, aside from just learning about basic engineering, mechanical, electrical, and programming, we do a lot of teamwork and team bonding as well as building leadership skills. We also learn a lot of general workforce things that are applicable to almost every single job. How to go out and interview a professional about what they do, and their job, and we’ve learned about how to conduct presentations in front of large groups of people. Just learning the basics of every single engineering degree and how to tie them all into any field that you could go into. It’s just a very good class to prepare you for the real world.” - Craig Hurst

“The program that I’m in is the Engineering program with Mr. Spurling. In the program, we learn about the various types of engineering and the engineering process. The class is fun and the reason is that we have many hands-on projects and it's not like a traditional high school course. It’s based on building and designing things of various types.” - Alexander Horton

Thanks, Abigail, Chris, Craig, and Alexander, and keep up the great work!

For more information about the Engineering program, contact instructor Corey Spurling (spurlingca@midlandps.org) or your assigned high school counselor.

Questions? Connect with us using the MPS Connect button below.

This past weekend the Midland High School Chapter of Business Professionals of America competed at the State level Conference in Grand Rapids. The team of 35 students, ranging from 9th-12th grade, participated in over 26 events. Students competed in a variety of events including personal business knowledge tests, presentation events, as well as team events. Some of the individual events that students won included Desktop Publishing (Mikayla Lewis-1st place), Web Design (Rori McCubbin-Green-1st place), Advanced Accounting (Bo Brutyn- 2nd Place), and C++ Programming (Emily Kraenzlein-5th place and the only female on stage for her event). Additionally, Steven Hackbarth won 1st place for his entrepreneurship event in which he designed a website to help children with reading disabilities and dyslexia. Isla McCubbin-Green won 1st place in her individual presentation event regarding the benefits of community college.

A brand new team of BPA members (Elly Black, Addisyn McLaughlin, Mya Presley, Keira Shaffner) took 2nd in their Economic Research Team Event with a presentation highlighting the economic impacts on the local community of both Oakland, California and Las Vegas, Nevada as a result of the move of the Raiders NFL Team. The Parliamentary Procedure Team, led by Chairman Andrew Steger, placed 2nd overall with the largest team of 7 Chemics (Addison Birchmeier, Bo Brutyn, Claire Carpenter, Luke James, Ava Kontranowski, Reagan Vokal)! Other highlights included a 1st place win for the Presentation Team (Steven Hackbarth, Janelle Harris, Hannah Monville) who presented the “Growth of the Gig Economy.”

The following students were also recognized on stage for their excellent results in the State Level Competition: Caleb Brown-6th in Fundamental Accounting, Lillian Lince-6th in Entrepreneurship, Cameron Mackezyk-6th in Administrative Research Project, Isla McCubbin-Green-7th in Python Programming, Avery Miller-6th in Word Processing, Hannah Monville-4th in HR Management, Myah Shelton-6th in Prepared Speech. Currently there are 18 National qualifiers with another 3 slated as alternates. The National BPA Conference will be held in Anaheim, California in late April. Congratulations to our BPA team for all of their hard work, effort, dedication, and perseverance! The BPA Team is led by both Dr. Jeanna Cronk and Mrs. Melissa DeBoer. MHS celebrates ALL of our student competitors as well as the 18 students who will be moving on to the National Competition!