By KIMBERLEY GILLES, associate editor

The six 2005-2006 high school teams and their completed mini-motorcycles.

Fox Valley Technical College (www.fvtc.edu/) launched its Mini-Chopper Build project during the 2004-2005 school year as a way to inspire high school juniors and seniors to consider careers in manufacturing. The project, modeled after the American Chopper television show, is designed to engage students in the entire production process — from design to completion — and show them the possibilities and opportunities available to them in manufacturing, from blue-collar to white-collar jobs.

Each year, the college, with the financial assistance of a Perkins Grant under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and corporate sponsorships, engages six Appleton, Wis.-area high schools in the program. Each school has a team of three or four students, a coordinator and corporate sponsor.

For example, Kuka Robotics (www.kukarobotics.com) provided funds to Seymour High School for the 2005-2006 program.

Over a 30-week period, each team designs and builds a non-street-legal motorcycle that has all the functioning mechanical parts of a regular-size motorcycle. Students meet on Thursday evenings for three-hour class sessions that cover topics that range from project management, team building, design and fabrication, to finishing, assembly, and quality inspection and testing. Team members are involved in seven of the college's engineering and manufacturing programs: Industrial Engineering Technology, Mechanical Design Technology, Machine Tool Technology, Metal Fabrication/Welding, Electronics, and Auto Collision Repair and Refinishing Technology. And they learn about responsibility, dependence and independence.

"What the program has done is almost immeasurable in terms of student enthusiasm and comments they received from people who see the motorcycles," says Mike Cattelino, associate dean of manufacturing, transportation and agriculture at the college. "The program has re-energized and refocused some of the local high schools to look more seriously at manufacturing initially from the skills end," he adds. The program also has changed student's perception that all manufacturing jobs are dirty, he continues.

Now in its third year, the program is evolving. Next year, the Mini-Chopper Build program will include the topic of business plans. Each team will develop a business plan with the aid of the college's small business/entrepreneurship center. The plans will be evaluated by different businesses, and the group of students that develops the best business plan will receive an extra sum of money for its project.