A fresh metal sign will adorn the Montana Highway Patrol’s new home in Boulder, and the sign is being fabricated by the patrol’s neighbor, Jefferson High School.
Jefferson High School’s welding classes take time each year to give back to the community, according to Dave Heimann, the school’s welding instructor; this year they did so by working with the Highway Patrol to create a 36-by-42-inch sign for the new offices, located on the North Campus of the former Montana Developmental Center, accessed off of East Fourth Avenue east of JHS. Heimann said he reached out to the Montana Highway Patrol with a proposal for the project. Each year he works some form of community service into his advanced welding classes, he said: A prior project involved crafting a sign for the Boulder Forest Garden.
“These projects are designed to give back to the community and to allow the students to experience the reward of working on something for the greater good,” Heimann said. “I block out a month or so of time every spring for the community service unit in class. Students are graded on their participation and contribution to the project.”
Brent Bartle, a senior working on the Highway Patrol project, said that it has been a new experience for him, and that it has been a unique way to use his knowledge of welding. Bartle, who has been involved in welding classes since his junior year, said that “the project let me work with my friends and it allowed us to have control on what we were building, and it gave us experience to work through mistakes and challenges.”
Riley Stock, another Jefferson senior, said that while the project is somewhat new to him, students were able to use the school’s CNC plasma cutting table, which he was familiar with. Stock said the best part about being involved with the project for him was “being able to make the project how we wanted, and what we wanted to do for the Highway Patrol.”
Heimann said that he’s enjoyed seeing how enthusiastic his students are about the project and giving back to our local community: “It’s fun to watch the students’ initial response to the idea turn into a beautiful work of art, the countless hours of hard work and devotion that go into it, and seeing their personal growth along the way as they find satisfaction in doing a project that helps others.”
So far, the students have spent almost 30 hours on the sign and will be close to 50 hours when they are finished, with Heimann having also put many hours into the digital draft and design of the sign. Heimann noted in an email to The Monitor on Tuesday that the sign is still a work in progress and “is going to be much more detailed” than it is at the moment.
