(Riverton, WY) Contango Resources recently made a donation to the RHS Career Center’s SkillsUSA program for the purchase of tools that the students have used for a bridge project that was presented at the Wyoming SkillsUSA competition held in April.
“We are replacing the footbridge on the west side of Jaycee Park,” said RHS SkillsUSA instructor Tawn Gopp. “We had some kids that presented it as a community service project for the vocational competition.”
The project ended up placing third in the Community Services category at the Wyoming SkillsUSA Championship held in April at Casper College. Contango Resources donated $2600, which went towards the purchase of tools that were used for the competition.
“The students are using the tools that were purchased with the donation to build the bridge,” said Gopp, who is also the Automotive Tech instructor. “SkillsUSA is similar to FFA, but for welding, automotive, construction, and woodworking.”
“We’re a project-based skills organization, so we do a community service project,” added RHS Industrial Arts instructor Lance Gard. “We’re working with Rusty (Davis) and the city, and hope to get it into the park within the next couple of weeks…we’re on the city’s timeline for that.”
According to their website, SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers, and industry “working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. We help each student excel. A nonprofit national education association, SkillsUSA serves middle-school, high-school and college/postsecondary students preparing for careers in trade, technical, and skilled service occupations.”
Another RHS SkillsUSA project has been a tiny home being built for Habitat for Humanity. “We have a class for geometry and construction combined, so we teach geometry class, then we used the concepts of geometry to build the house,” Gard said. “It’s taken us this whole year to get to this point, and we’re just now putting the siding on. The inside is unfinished…we’ll finish up the outside here before school ends, and then we’ll work on the inside of the building next year.”
Gard said that the estimated cost of the tiny home thus far has been about $28-30,000. “It’s not finished, so you have to consider the inside getting finished and furnished, plus the cost of gas and electricity, plus moving and placing it, which costs money, too,” he said. “It’s too small of square footage to go in Riverton, so they’ll probably have to place it somewhere in the county.”
For more information on the RHS SkillsUSA program, contact Tawn Gopp at 307-856-9491 x4015 or e-mail [email protected].