Class to educate about wood
industry, improve program enrollment at Purdue
By Ian Clift
Summer reporter
This week, a collection of tours and classes will
teach educators about wood products and the wood industry in hopes of
persuading high school students to pursue a career in wood products
manufacturing technology.
Rado Gazo, assistant professor of forestry and
natural resources, created the program three years ago while looking
for ways to improve enrollment in wood manufacturing programs at Purdue.
"There are about 2000 job openings in the field
every year and there are only about 200 graduates," Gazo said.
FNR 58B: "Wood is Good," which offers teachers
an introduction to a wide array of existing wood applications, is offered
by the department of forestry and natural resources. The graduate credit
class, which has grown from a class of six when it first began, to a
class of 22 students this year, requires teachers to participate in
a two-week program beginning with one week of internet lectures on wood
products, paper manufacturing, furniture design and furniture manufacturing.
The objective of the course is to help educators
better teach their students on the many avenues they may take in the
wood industry. Gazo's hope is that after taking the course, teachers
will present the information to their students and at least one of them
will become interested in the industry and come to Purdue to study.
Gazo said, "I am recruiting students, among other
things, in order to get credit for the course (teachers) have to present
one course to their students and take them on a field trip"
Today will be the first day of the week of classes
and tours that will provide course takers with information about the
properties, supply, consumption, availability and unique characteristics
of wood, among other things. They will also be exposed to five experiments
performed by the four course instructors and their assistants.
Eva Haviarova, wood research manager at Purdue,
was involved in instructing the course last year and performed a paper
making experiment. She said, "I will tell them how paper is made in
the industry, I use a certain demonstration, show them a simplified
process of making paper, so they can do it before there students."
"This year I will be involved in another course
which is strength in furniture. We are trying to make furniture that
is durable. I will depict a case study and point out several aspects
of design," said Haviarova.
The class will also be educated on how to harvest
trees, how to obtain lumber from timber and be allowed to create lumber
from a tree using a portable saw mill and wood drying kilns.
Gazo said, "We use a probable saw mill and we take
the logs and cut the boards, everybody gets to do that."
The course also provides a tour of various manufacturing
industries around Indiana.
Gazo said, "We're going to see a saw mill, a furniture
company, a tree farmer and a wood working tools manufacturer."
He said, "Teachers learn that wood is a renewable
and recyclable resource and the more we use it the better it is for
the environment."
Haviarova said students are usually high school
teachers between the ages of 40 and 50. "It is impossible to teach them
everything in one week but I think that they are going to learn a lot."
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