Star CTE interns for ISD 728 sign agreements with RDO
by Jim Boyle
Editor
The Elk River Area School District held its first Career Technical Education (CTE) Employer Signing Day on Thursday, April 18, at Rogers High School and Elk River High School.
RDO Equipment Company in Dayton made it possible with a desire to lock down a couple of District 728 interns with up to $32,000 in commitments that will help pay for tools they will need, their education and even a signing bonus.
The star CTE interns are Elk River High School senior McKenna Hoffman and Rogers High School senior Henning Johnson. Both have career aspirations that cut right through work done at RDO, where they have been interning this current school year.
The students have agreed to intern at RDO when not in classes and commit to at least one year of full-time work after completing their technical school programs.
The tools and toolbox RDO will be purchasing for each student to ensure they have the tools needed to work on equipment have an average value $8,000.
A graduation sign-on bonus of $5,000 will be handed to them when they complete tech school, provided their GPA is 3.0 or better.
A four-year financial incentive of $12,000 to $20,000 will be paid out over four years once they join RDO full-time after their schooling. All of these incentives are in addition to their regular paychecks.
“In short, each student will be receiving $32,000 in tool and financial support to assist them in education and the start of their careers as heavy equipment service technicians,” said Andy Luikens, an RDO recruiting program manager.
Luikens and other RDO team members attended the CTE signings in Rogers and Elk River last week, where teachers, administrators and family joined the students for this momentous day.
“We celebrate a lot of things in this world,” Luikens said. “But students that want to put their hands to work and make an impact growing and building the world is one thing that we need to start (celebrating) more of, so this is really exciting for us.”
RDO serves the greater northern metro area by selling and servicing John Deere construction equipment as well as Vermeer industrial and forestry product lines.
The sponsorships are part of the Access Your Future service program RDO has had for two decades and has strengthened and broadened over the years to better meet its needs. There are three different financial incentive pathways, including the service pathway that has been around since the program’s inception. RDO has added components for parts and a component for sales that make up the second and third pathways. Each has been assigned different financial incentives.
RDO uncovered the local interns who have been active in the Elk River Area School District’s robust CTE program, which has been a point of emphasis in ISD 728 for the past eight years under the leadership of Amy Lord and support of the Elk River Area School Board.
Hoffman charting her own path in male-dominated profession
Hoffman, an 18-year-old Elk River student, is the daughter of a sod farm owner. She originally thought she wanted to break into agriculture.
“I eventually realized farming wasn’t for me, but I still wanted to find something related to ag involving diesel,” she said.
She’s now looking into the world of diesel on the construction side of the equation. She has been carving a path at Elk River High School, cutting through often male-dominated classes to pursue dreams in a male-dominated career field.
Luikens praised the intern and said some of RDO’s most productive workers are women.
Hoffman took auto mechanics as a sophomore and found she liked the mechanical nature of the class. She said it took some effort to push aside the grumbling she heard by her peers. “Honestly, you just have to do your own thing and don’t worry about what other people think about you,” she said.
As she has moved along in high school, she has pursued work-based learning opportunities, something CTE teacher Matt Steuber has helped her navigate. Hoffman started in the CTE internship program this fall.
“She’s super quiet in class, but she is super on top of stuff,” Stueber said, noting the child labor laws she’s learned about and the OSHA 10 certification that she earned. “She’s just been a pleasure to have in class.”
She came to him with ideas for jobs and pursued them. When they didn’t pan out, Stueber mentioned RDO and passed along a good word.
She started in the service department, and now she’s experiencing the parts department as well. Hoffman said the internship has been both amazing and eye-opening.
“They (RDO) have a great group of people, and they have always treated me like I can do the job and I can do it well,” she said. “It has been great. It has made me more comfortable in the industry and made me realize it is something that I can do.”
She plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio. She says the scholarship will be a huge help and will allow her to pursue the career of her choice without the weight of worrying about how to pay for it.
“A lot of people when they don’t have an interest in sports, they see a dead-end road ahead,” she said. “I think it’s important to help people who have other interests get into college.”
Johnson has passion for farm tractors
Johnson works in the service department of RDO right now after getting his start in parts. He works as a diesel technician, which gives him an opportunity to work on the “big stuff.”
“Any of you who drove out here and saw all the stuff used to work on those highways out there, causing all our traffic, all those CAT machines, we work on,” he told members of the Elk River Area School Board on April 22. “(Those are the) excavators, wheel loaders, bulldozers, skid steers, drills, whatever it may be.”
Johnson says he is going into the John Deere program at the North Dakota State College of Science, “so I will be working at RDO while ... going to school through their John Deere agriculture program.”
Johnson has aspirations of someday working on John Deere agricultural machinery, an option which RDO can provide, as they have contracts with John Deere north of Dayton and in other states.
Johnson developed his interest in tractors while growing up.
“They were always kind of my favorite thing, and I always loved looking out the window,” he said. “I still do, actually, I’m 18 years old, and I still love looking at tractors. It’s something that’s always kind of fascinated me.”
He started turning wrenches on his grandfather’s tractor when he was really young. In high school, he has taken a range of classes, including woods and small engines, “which really helps you kind of get the gears turning in your head to help you understand the mechanical side of things,” he said.
He has also taken welding I and II, which turned out to be very helpful.
“The first thing (RDO) had me doing was welding brackets on an excavator,” Johnson said. “So thank you to (my teacher Dirk) Udee.”
Johnson has also taken CAD and drafting, which has taught him about making blueprints and drawing parts, which has helped him find success as an intern
While at NDSCS, Johnson will work on brand-new John Deere tractors that will have bugs planted in them for the students to diagnose and learn the software side of the work.
“We also have programs that will be for motors, transmissions, hydraulics, and all the things like that,” he said.
The sponsorship RDO has offered him has been great news. He knows there are requirements, which he said are reasonable, ranging from finishing with a 3.0 GPA or higher and then putting in time at RDO once he’s done with school.
He’s already ordered his tools and will get them in early June, he said. He’ll continue his internship this summer.
Luikens and Stueber are happy the students have found what they’re passionate about and are pursuing their dreams.
“They’re essentially getting paid to do what they love,” Stueber said. “Isn’t that what we’re all searching for in life? I just think this is such a great motivational thing to have students following their dreams and have students getting a really nice chunk of money to do that. What’s better than that for a high school kid graduating?”
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