TOLEDO, Ohio — Students with the Toledo Technology Academy are getting ready for the real world by working for a start-up car company.
They even had the chance to be part of a secret project developing prototypes on a new truck.
As seniors, the group worked for Core Molding Technologies, which was contracted to design and build the machines for a start-up electric vehicle platform in Temperance.
"It was something that some of our students might be very interested in. He called me up and said, 'hey we need workers. We're having a hard time finding workers,' which, that's what's happening all over the country right now," said David Volk, the Assistant Director at Toledo Technology Academy.
With the positions open, four seniors took an internship to work at the company.
"We were making prototypes. So those had to be hand-built. So it, it wasn't that hard. It was a chill work. It was pretty fun. We mostly did hoods, fenders and outers," said Brandon Esquiveo, a senior at Toledo Technology Academy.
"Most of us, we were doing work with fiberglass sanding and adhering parts together. We were constructing different parts of car bodies together made of this fiberglass and special chemical adhesive to make sure these car parts bonded properly," said Jonah Fry, a senior at Toledo Technology Academy.
But that's about all the students can share.
"If it was proprietary information, then we weren't allowed to share it. So all I can do really share with you is that it was a future truck design you might see on the road in the next few years," explained Fry.
It all sounds top secret, but the experience is something these students plan to use after graduating.
"I felt extremely, extremely fortunate. I know that because of COVID, a lot of my senior friends haven't gotten any opportunities to do an internship. Usually, it's every senior has an opportunity to leave but because of COVID, very few amount of us were given the opportunity to go anywhere at all," said Nathan Glenn, a senior at Toledo Technology Academy.
"It was a great insight as to how like the infrastructure versus the social environments, how they collide. And it was, that's not really something like you learn from a book or in class. It was much more," said Ethan Guenther, a senior at Toledo Technology Academy.
All four graduated Monday.
They tell us they either plan on going to college or developing a career in engineering and technology.