Vote YES 4 Cardinal Industries / Mayville Manufacturing!

Cardinal Industries was started in late 2015 by Mayville High School Tech Ed Instructor, Dave Seiler, to help students gain real life experience in manufacturing, business management, marketing, and other STEAM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Arts and Math) through activities in High School.

The program was pioneered by Cardinal Manufacturing in Eleva Strum.  DPI thought that this school was onto something and asked for a complete plan on how to implement this in other schools.  It can be accessed through the DPI website.  Cardinal Industries is an off-shoot of this model.  It is still in its infancy, but making strides daily.

The premise for the program is to work with local industry partners and non-profit groups to bring in small projects for students to work on in a business-like environment, and empower students to stretch their education to learn the application of their classroom activities.  There is a skills gap in manufacturing locally as there is nationally.  It will only continue to become more prevalent as the baby boomer generation retires and exits the workforce.  This program is important as it creates awareness to what manufacturing has to offer and prepares our younger generation to have excitement to enter our workforce and help fill the skills gap we will continue to see in the future.

This program has projects that are quoted by the students to the industry partners or are donated or sold at a sharp discount to the non-profit groups in our community.  Any funds raised by the projects are used to help fund other projects for non-profits, or to purchase materials and small equipment needed for the business.  In this way, the school district budget is not used to fund Cardinal Industries.

The program was started with a savings of about $1,000 from various small projects.  In the second year, they raised this to approximately $5,000.  Their goal is to raise enough money and work with outside grants to purchase a CNC machine to allow them to do larger projects.  Once they can get to this level, they will be able to generate more revenue, and in turn purchase larger equipment.  And they are doing this without the help of the school district budget!  This is a win-win program for all involved.

Also, this program is advised by a Tech Ed Advisory board comprised of members of the community that are employed by all of the major manufacturers of the Mayville community.  Several of these members were also active members of the Facilities Study Committee that reviewed the needs of the school district overall.

The greatest part of this program is that it is driving growth in our students’ experience and our Tech Ed department without drawing on the school budget.  We have an awesome instructor leading the program, putting in many extra hours outside of his contract requirement every day to make this happen.  Mr. Seiler sacrifices his personal time so that our students can have exposure to a manufacturing environment and have more opportunities in the future.  He has even worked with the Art department to cross the divide between Art and Manufacturing.  To see the results, go to:  www.bit.ly/PartnersInScrap

The April 4^th Referendum addresses some critical needs for the Tech Ed program.  The current area lacks floor space, ceiling height, and equipment to take it any further.  They are doing the best that they can with the resources on hand.  However, they have not done any major projects for any manufacturers because they are not capable of doing so for the reasons mentioned above.  The new space will allow for larger machines, easier access, and higher ceiling heights.  A truck dock is also provided for that will also benefit the entire school district.

This is only a fraction of the $9.7 mm to be spent on Learning Space Upgrades and Improvements.  This figure includes the renovations of most of the classrooms in the high school, along with maker spaces and fab labs in the Middle School and Parkview.  The agricultural department would also receive new space, but a lot of this space would be shared between Ag, Tech Ed, and the Science area.  By putting this new space in the current bus port, the concerns about energy efficiency of the cafeteria glass walls and the upstairs above the bus port are addressed.  Yes, a lot of this ties to STEAM, but all educational areas are impacted by this budget.

Also, the accomplishments of Cardinal Industries have been well-publicized in the Dodge County Pionier with nearly every project. Just this past week, the marketing students at Mayville High School were working on developing new marketing materials for Cardinal Industries and discovered that Cardinal Industries was trademarked by a company years ago.  They then researched the topic and developed a new marketing plan, renaming the program and developing a new logo.  This new name is Mayville Manufacturing.  It is a great accomplishment to have our students in business classes apply classroom instruction to a real-life situation in a business environment at their age.  A focus on STEAM makes this possible.

It is important for the future of our community that manufacturing is alive and well and this resides on our local schools’ ability to make the younger generation aware and ready to enter the workforce.  Without this we are sacrificing the future of our community to grow and prosper.

We salute Mr. Dave Seiler and the Mayville School District for having the vision and the ambition to work with the resources they have to connect our students to the local industry, to provide our students with a real-life application of their education, and for finding a way to do so without causing any impact whatsoever to the school’s budget.  The level of student learning by operating a business is unmatched with any curriculum you could teach.  Students take pride and ownership in what they do.  We appreciate their hard work and dedication to making Mayville’s STEAM / Tech Ed program a success and recognized on the state level for advancements in education for Tech Ed.

Vote YES 4 Mayville Manufacturing and Industry on April 4^th!

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