APA Welcomes Atlas Tool and Die

  Bill Vogel welcomes Zach Mottl of Atlas Tool and Die as the newest APA Partner.  Mr. Mottl toured the Manufacturing Technology Center and observed our students studying the CNC Horizontal Lathe and to prepare for the CNC Operator NIMS Credential exam.  Helping Mr. Vogel welcome Mr. Mottl are: Allanta Hudson, Deshawn Hunter, Iking Canavy, [...]

Making Connections: Machine Shop & AP Calculus

By Steve McIlrath, APA Math Teacher Recently Mr. Varela from the Machine Shop teamed up with the Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus class, helping bring to life the idea of rotating volumes around a fixed axis.  The AP Calculus students just finished a unit on finding volumes of solids using integration techniques.  With machining tools located [...]

Junior Job Shadow Day a Success

Trevon Dotson and Marla Sanders spent the day at American Grinding. On March 16, 2011, 35 APA Juniors participated in a job shadow day.  Students had the opportunity to see what they learn in class in action while visiting some of APA’s dedicated partners.  Students began their day with a tour of the facilities and [...]

Austin Polytech on PBS NewsHour

In October, WTTW’s acclaimed current affairs show Chicago Tonight aired a feature segment about Austin Polytech, spreading the word about our program to viewers across the Chicago area. Last night, audiences throughout the United States learned about Austin Polytech as our local story aired on the acclaimed national news show PBS NewsHour. If you missed [...]

APA Students Participate John Marshall Law School Patent Mock Trial

Ten Austin Polytech Sophomores and Juniors have been participating in a Patent Savvy Workshop facilitated by John Marshall Law School Professor Don Moyer and seven of his law students. The purpose of the workshop is to introduce Austin Polytech’s engineering and manufacturing students to the importance and value of intellectual property rights and patents. The [...]

How The Media Fails Manufacturing

One of the toughest problems facing American manufacturing has nothing to do with taxes, technology or trade policy: it is “messaging”. The message the general public gets about manufacturing is usually unrelentingly bad (and 20 years out-of-date) because the job of telling the rich, complicated and hopeful story of American manufacturing has been given to [...]

Press coverage triple-whammy for Austin Polytech

What do Chicago Tonight, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune have in common? They all featured great stories about Austin Polytech this month. On October 14, WTTW’s acclaimed current affairs show, Chicago Tonight, aired a segment about Austin Polytech by Chicago News Cooperative reporter Ash-har Quraishi. The segment complemented a New York Times [...]

Rebuilding the Jobs Pipeline

Check out the new Encyclopedia Britannica blog post “Rebuilding the Jobs Pipeline” by Edward E. Gordon, noted author and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation. Ed is an expert on workforce issues. There are more than 1.7 million manufacturing jobs in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicagoland has one of the largest concentrations of small advanced technical [...]

APA welcomes new NIMS instructor Mr. Pablo Varela

Please join us in welcoming our newest addition to the APA team, NIMS instructor Mr. Pablo Varela, who will work closely with machine shop instructor Mr. Tom O’Brien to prepare juniors to earn up to two machining certificates from the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS). Mr. Varela has over 20 years of industry experience, [...]

APA partner Johnson Controls leads mentoring activity for seniors

On September 22, APA partner company Johnson Controls brought 20 staff members to Austin Polytech for a mentoring activity with nearly 100 seniors. Following an informational presentation about renewable energy, Johnson Controls selected six students for a competition to see whose wind turbine design generates the most energy. The seniors then split into small groups, [...]