TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. -
April 10, 2014 -
PRLog -- Pinellas Career Academies are not your same old public school specialty program. East Lake High School Engineering Academy grows entrepreneurs, the next generation of TEDx trailblazers who learn, think, invent, and re-engineer. Imagine innovators like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Dean Kamen. Now imagine if they all attended the same high school career academy taught by a wealth of inspirational teachers. East Lake’s engineering academy pairs passionate professional engineers, scientists, and CEO’s with tenacious, skill-absorbing, technology-loving teenagers. The academy creator is entrepreneur Paul Wahnish. If you know him it’s not surprising that his not-for-profit, Career Technical Education Foundation, has created a world with a half million dollar, hands-on technology lab for 14 – 18 year olds. It hosts a cyber security club that doubles membership each year, and a robotics club that creates a new $20,000 robot each year for international competition. These opportunities unleashed the entrepreneurial spirit in Jason Wilkinson, Shea Akerman, and Jason Williams. They are the winners of the $10,000 “Next Generation Entrepreneur”
grant from Pinellas Education Foundation and FairWarning. The students created a universal soldering attachment that allows one person with 2 hands to hold 3 things: a soldering iron, solder wire, and the metal piece being repaired.
The “Next Generation Entrepreneur”
grant was explained during a school assembly. The grant allows high school student teams to submit innovative ideas that can grow into a business. Out of 60 applications, 10 semifinalists are chosen to attend entrepreneur class. Presentation skills and an on-camera presence is cultivated at Home Shopping Network, business skills like generating a recurring income is taught at FairWarning’
s Clearwater headquarters, and tackling sales and legal aspects of a new business is explained by the Pinellas Education Foundation. Teams make presentations to a panel of judges along with a formal business plan. The Wilkinson, Akerman, and Williams team was chosen as one of 3 finalists. They set up a demonstration booth at the Career Education awards ceremony rubbing elbows with the county’s most innovative career educators. The team agrees the win has significantly influenced their career direction.
What happens next: FairWarning CEO, Kurt Long, will mentor their entrepreneurial journey as the students launch their first company and patent, then market their device. How will this work when they all go away to different colleges? Next fall Wilkinson heads to Kettering University in Flint, Michigan to study and intern in electrical engineering;
“Rocket man” Akerman goes to Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne to major in aerospace; Williams is attending
Florida PolytechnicUniversity in Lakeland to pursue his electrical engineering passion. The 18 year-olds say they are committed to 3 things: college, internship experiences, and being entrepreneurs.
Their teamwork is inspiring. “I would not have come up with all the defects to develop the best design by myself,” says Wilkinson. Their first product went through several designs before they made their first CAD (computer-aided design) drawing. Multiple prototypes were created in a 3-D printer as they experimented on how to use the new device. With their mentor’s help they plan to market their solder invention to hobbyists. They also discovered an industrial interest. Impressively their goals go beyond supplying this one product. They plan to continue finding problems to solve, and they look forward to collaborating on new ideas together through their new company.
Paul Wahnish reflected on his students entrepreneurial abilities, "The things that matter most in education do not come from books but from the creative minds of our children and the educators who allow them the freedom to discover." Take a real-world problem, couple it with imagination, support it with skills and state-of-the-
art technology. This achievement makes us all believers.
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