BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
VERSAILLES, Ind. -- Students at Southeastern Career Center love their Baja buggy. It's fast. It's loud.
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Richard Leach, 19, from South Ripley High School, works on a Baja buggy with Julie Cox, 17, from Jac-Cen-Del High School.
(Ryan Miller photo)
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And they made it themselves.
From engineering to construction, painting and installing the 450-horsepower engine, the buggy is the creation of juniors and seniors at the vocational school and three area high schools: South Ripley in Versailles; Jac-Cen-Del in Osgood; and Batesville. The project links academics with mechanics, and teaches students from work-based and college-bound curricula mutual respect. It requires teamwork and dedication.
During these first few days of the new school year, auto students are putting the finishing mechanical touches on the bright red-and-blue racing buggy. It is decorated with multicolored flames, the number 98 and a custom-designed crest bearing insignia from each school. As this semester wears on, science and math pupils will test the mean machine to determine its mileage, acceleration and other specs. Then English and Spanish classes will draft a bilingual owners' manual. Marketing students will advertise the buggy and sell tickets for a raffle in which the buggy will eventually be given away.
"There is so much excitement about this," said career center Principal Jim Rogers. "Kids always appreciate machines, and especially machines that you race and have fun with. As they saw it wasn't just a pipe dream, they got more and more excited."
But that wasn't always the case.
When a group of teachers returned last summer from a "Schools That Work" seminar, designed to integrate vocational and academic classwork, they proposed a full-scale, from-the-ground-up project. Auto teacher Gary De Witt suggested a Baja buggy as something that would be unique and fun.
The buzz immediately spread among teachers, who brainstormed for ways to use the buggy construction in their classes. Students were interested, but unsure of the new approach.
"Some of the kids were kind of skeptical about it when we started. We had never taken on anything like this from the ground up," said auto body teacher Larry Stewart. "I'd been teaching here for 12 years, and I wasn't sure myself how we'd do it. But pretty soon, things started looking up."
As students began talking about the buggy, donations of materials began rolling in. Mr. Rogers estimates that all told, the school spent only about $500 on the project.
Mr. De Witt said enrollment in auto mechanics classes had been down last year. Now there is a waiting list. "Everyone wants to get involved in something like this," he said.
Bev Ester, who teaches secretarial classes this year, said that with creative planning, students in virtually every discipline have been able to play a role. Her pupils typed thank-you notes that were sent to donors. Communications students took digital pictures of the process and designed a Web page on which to post them -- http://www.seidata.com/~bholaday/hstw.html.
Vocational students learned how they will use academics in their careers, while academic kids discovered the real-life applications of their more esoteric studies, Mr. Rogers said. And they all learned to rely on one another and live up to expectations.
"We built it from scratch," said Derrick Yocum, a senior from Hanover. "Everybody's got to work together to have something come out right."
Mr. Rogers rode it in a recent local parade, and other public appearances are planned throughout the fall. A group of teachers took the buggy to the "Schools That Work" conference this summer and reported on their progress. And it has gained a lot of attention from the community.
"People love it," Ms. Ester said. "They are so impressed that our kids did this."
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