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Educational enterprise Photo by Bob Pennell Prospect High junior Zack Coble uses a power grinder to fit a part for a metal gate for the school's shop area. Students like Coble are learning both the craft and the business of industrial arts, thanks to teacher Don Andresen. Prospect high builds up its industrial arts curriculum By VICKI GUARINO PROSPECT -- With welders, lathes, table saws and grinders, high school students are building a shop program as they learn both the craft and the business of industrial arts. Under the direction of Prospect businessman, designer and fabricator Don Andresen, students are learning and laboring to remake the program to match today's business and industry needs. In the process, Andresen hopes to establish a unique and vital program that will attract youngsters to the remote, northeastern Jackson County school. With a total school enrollment of just 69 and a state education system that funds schools on the basis of student numbers, Prospect school officials have worried that their high school could become too small to operate. Andresen's program is part of a community effort to lure more students to the school with specialized programs and services unavailable in neighboring school districts. Halfway through his second year at school, Andresen already has managed to draw a hearty share of Prospect students to the shop buildings on the far side of the gym. About 40 students are participating this term. The new focus of Prospect's industrial arts program suits students like Juhlia Glover, a junior who has been busy building clocks to sell in her parents' store. She struggles in the academic classes, where the subject matter seems distant from her life and career prospects. "I like working with my hands," Juhlia says. "I like the classes I can actually do things in." Students are operating everything from the dump truck and chainsaw to wire-feed welder and drill press. They build roads, gates, wooden clocks and specialty vehicles, including two in the making: a back-country four-wheel-drive rig for hunters and a demonstration sports car. "Kids are attracted to flash, and this is flash," Andresen says, standing over the practically bare frame of what one day will be a roaring, two-seater rag-top. Students also go out on U.S. Forest Service projects -- an easy assignment, considering the school and the community are surrounded by the Rogue River National Forest. This fall, students provided the labor for an experimental tree-thinning project designed to allow the low-temperature burning of forest slash in damp, winter weather, protecting from heat damage the young firs left standing. "It was a lot of work," senior Jeremy Adkins recalls. "It was a lot harder than I thought it would be." Jeremy, who had attended a much larger high school, says he prefers the small size and close attention at Prospect. And physical rigors aside, Jeremy says he particularly enjoys the industrial arts projects. As often as possible, Andresen incorporates commerce and cash into assignments like the federal tree-thinning project. The money students earn buys more shop tools and supplies. Through those efforts, plus donations from community backers, the shop has gained new welders, a fork lift, wood working tools, parts and pieces for several cars and trailers, and its own bus for transportation to job sites. Andresen has contributed some of his own equipment, including a dump truck from time to time. He figures he has nearly enough hoists, hand tools and other equipment for a full-fledged auto mechanic's shop. Once Andresen and his students find enough time and space to set up all the equipment, the school will be able to open a repair shop for local customers. Bigger projects are in the works. Andresen is optimistic about the district's chances for a $250,000 federal grant for greenhouses that could establish the school as a major supplier of endangered range grasses. He says students and the rest of the community could use the greenhouses for raising food crops, and even warm-water fish, for resale. "My aim is full employment for all those who want jobs," he says. At age 61, Andresen brings wide-ranging experience to the school project. He has been involved in manufacturing and heavy equipment projects from Mexico to Alaska. Of late, he's the owner of Toy Loader, building his own design of racks and lifts enabling sportsmen to carry boats, snowmobiles and similar "toys" on top of campers and on double-tiered trailers. Although he has never worked with teenagers before joining the Prospect faculty last year, he has worked with many employees in their early 20s. Besides teaching students the vocational skills they need, Andresen impresses upon them the importance of academics as well. Take math, for instance. "The drafting is an important part of this whole project," says Andresen. "If they can't do the math, they can't do the drafting. If they can't do the drafting, they can't do the projects." Or reading. Before students get to pick up a tool, they invariably have to pick up a book. "You can't do this work if you can't read," Andresen says. "That's a fallacy a lot of kids come to the class with -- that they don't have to read." The academic demands have driven junior Zack Coble to take more classes than necessary for a diploma. He already has college credits for work in computer-assisted drafting. Andresen says learning is the bottom line by which he'll gauge the success or failure of his program. "These projects are the enticements. I'm trying to make it enticing enough that the students want to learn." 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