Recordpub.com - $102,000 goes to Kent schools Largest gift to district to aid woodworking program

By Dave O'Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
Partnerships with international corporations are continuing to pay dividends to Theodore Roosevelt High School and the future employees of the woodworking industry it is helping to train.
The most recent benefit was a donation of woodworking computer software from industrial partner the Microvellum Corporation that will teach students the design and construction of cabinets.
The donation is worth $102,000, the largest single gift of its kind ever received by the Kent School District, Kent Schools Treasurer Debbie Krutz said.
The Microvellum Corporation is a partner in WoodLinks USA, a corporate and educational effort that gives students the tools and training they need to enter the woodworking industry. The software includes libraries of both complete and partial designs available for download by students.
Troy Spear, Roosevelt's woodworking teacher and the 2008 National WoodLinks Teacher of the Year, said kitchen cabinets can be designed several different ways. Some designs use dowels, he said, and some " like the ones produced at Roosevelt " uses dados, a piece-by-piece form of construction.
"Through Microvellum, my students can go ahead and program whichever construction type they can do" using technology available in Roosevelt's wood shop, Spear said.
The Microvellum software provides schematics for both face frame construction and the frameless, or European, style of cabinetry. It was most recently used to design a pigeonhole cabinet for the Roosevelt choir program's part folders.
Students first created a "nested diagram," a kind of schematic showing how each part of the cabinet will be cut from the wood stock. Students take the drawing, upload it to the software, print out reports and make the required cuts with the machinery available to them.
"We specify "This is how I want to build this cabinet' and you build it from the library or do parts and pieces," Spear said.
Spear has worked to transform the wood shop into a state-of-the-art, technology heavy program complete with equipment donated by industry leaders such as Blum, Dux and Leiden Cabinetry. The Microvellum-Roosevelt High School collaboration is one of 57 such partnerships nationwide, according to the company.
"This is Microvellum putting their money where their mouth is," Spear said. "It goes back to the basis of what WoodLinks is: Preparing the entry-level workforce for the woodworking industry."
Roosevelt High School Principal Roger Sidoti credited Spear and former director of career education Kathy Thomas for reviving the fine woodworking program.
"We have more kids signed up for that particular program than wood shop ever had," he told the Kent Board of Education at its most recent meeting.
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