Students turn ideas into something real at Coal Ridge High School

Walk into Jeremy Heiser’s classroom at Coal Ridge High School, and it can feel a little overwhelming.

Computers line the room. 3D printers fill workspaces. Laser engravers, cameras, design projects, and half-finished student creations compete for space. Somewhere in the middle of it all, students design, print, troubleshoot, rebuild, and try again.

That last part may be the most important.

“I’m going to let students screw things up, and then we’re going to talk about it,” Heiser said. “Engineering design process lives in everything we do, not just CAD class.”

Heiser teaches Media Production, Intro to CAD Design & 3D Printing, Intro to Graphic Design, Advanced CAD Design & 3D Printing and yearbook at Coal Ridge.

The courses give students access to technology used in professional design, engineering, architecture and media production. In CAD, students begin with basic design programs and progress into Google SketchUp, software used for architectural and engineering design. Last year, one student took the challenge several steps further, creating and printing a 3D topographic map of the area between Silt and New Castle. It now sits proudly in the classroom display case.

For Heiser, projects like that illustrate what the classes are supposed to do.

“We want to open kids up to what is possible,” he said. His goal across the different courses is to get students to think critically, work through problems, and then “pursue the things that they are passionate about.”

Coal Ridge senior Kyler Jensen knows exactly what he likes about the classes.

“They’re really fun,” Jensen said. “They allow me to solve my way through problems. I want to be an engineer, so this gives me great experience with hardware troubleshooting and the design process. I get to experiment.” And, he added, experimentation means learning from what doesn’t work.

That experimentation often produces things that reach far beyond the classroom.

Students have helped create accurate Braille classroom signs for Coal Ridge, designed items for Make-A-Wish fundraisers, produced personalized gifts for veterans and helped create digital content for the school’s score table and televisions.

That work has also developed its own identity through Coal Ridge Custom Creations, giving students an opportunity to take an idea from concept to finished product.

And students want more of it.

Heiser estimates there are a couple hundred students on the waiting list for his 3D printing classes. Jensen understands that challenge personally. He requested the course repeatedly before finally getting into it during his senior year.

The biggest obstacle is not student interest or ideas: It is space.

The room was originally part of a much larger fabrication and manufacturing classroom before it was divided to create an additional classroom. Today, Heiser has little storage, and equipment packed into nearly every nook and cranny. About 15 3D printers may be operating at a time, with others waiting for parts, and only three students can safely work in the back lab at once.
Even scheduling becomes a puzzle. Prints that begin by taking 20 or 30 minutes eventually become two- or three-hour projects, tying up machines as the next class arrives. Advanced CAD and 3D printing has to be offered separately because there simply is not enough room to accommodate everyone at once.

Still, Heiser keeps finding ways to make room for one more idea.

For some, the classroom is simply another stop in their school day; for others, “this is a place of identity.” Regardless, he wants his room to be a place where every kid can come in and feel welcome. 

Whether a student eventually becomes an engineer, designer, photographer or something entirely different, Heiser wants the experience to accomplish something simple.

When students walk through his door, he wants them to know they are going to learn something interesting, figure something out and leave thinking,“That was a good hour.”