Students take advantage of Vo-Tech

by Kody Goff

Nine DWHS students are getting a head start on their college education or careers by attending Highland Community College Technical Center. While most of the classes are in Atchison, the Precision Ag program is in Highland.

Junior Kalab Ridout is attending electrical technology at the technical center. He said he enjoys the program because “I like doing electrical technology and wiring.”  In his program Ridout does both class work and wiring electrical circuits.

Senior Rory Powell is doing the Construction Technology Program. He said he is working on building a house. The part of the program Powell most enjoys is “Working on building our house.” 

Senior Devin Simmonds is also attending the HCC-TC. Simmonds is enrolled in Precision Ag. "I have been in 2 different programs, last year I was in Diesel Tech and this year Precision Ag and this year is by far better than the last. We get to do things outside the classroom and shop more than the Diesel Program, for example on 10/08/19 we went out to the field and road in the combine getting first hand experience of the new software in the combine. Flying drones is pretty fun too. Just getting out in the field and getting hands on experience is probably the best words to sum it up.” 

Simmonds explained the timeline for completing the program. “This is a 1-year program but since I started late, it will be a two-year program for me. But I will be graduating in May of 2021 with an Associate of Applied Science in Precision Agriculture which is pretty cool I think. In this program, we will learn about GIS, GPS, Remote Sensing and a whole variety of other things. We have done soil samplings, map gridding, drones to inspect the fields, we have a gator with the technology installed to allow it to auto steer across the field with the sprayer in the back with automatic shut-off which we can set to shut off individual nozzles when they go out of the boundary lines of the field. The sprayer also adjusts the volume of spray based on the speed of the gator to make sure you're getting good coverage just like a full-size sprayer. Switching to this program was the best choice I ever made."