Petoskey High School hosts regional MITES competition
PETOSKEY — Petoskey High School hosted the 2023 Michigan Industrial and Technology Education Society (MITES) regional competition Friday, May 5, where high school and middle school students competed to head to the state competition in Kalamazoo May 10-13.
This is the school’s first time hosting the regional competition.
Students from Cheboygan, Mackinaw City, Petoskey, Cadillac, Traverse City, Charlevoix and more all had their work competing.
The competition was judged by local professionals, including interior designers and engineers.
Petoskey drafting teacher Lauren Liebler said the competition is good for celebrating the trades and students within the trades.
The competition ranges from woodworking to design to drafting. People competed both by age and category during the event. Middle schoolers were in their own category, while freshmen and sophomores were in their own division and juniors and seniors were in their own as well.
“I'm always amazed,” Liebler said. "It's incredible what they produce — the woodworking projects, the drafting — it's so amazing what these students can produce. And then you think about the hours that these students poured into these projects to have them turn out the way they did, so it's pretty incredible.”
This year was Petoskey senior Reagan Walsh’s second time competing in the MITES competition. This year, she competed in exterior rendering and 3D model competitions.
Heading to the University of Cincinatti to study architecture, her drafting classes and MITES competitions both have given her the opportunity to learn how to use different programs she will need through college and into the workforce.
She designed the exterior rendering on Revit and the 3D model on AutoCAD.
Walsh said she had been working on the projects — a home exterior and an acrylic skyscraper — since January.
Heading into the competition, she said it was stressful competing against the peers that she was working with in the classroom, but she was excited for the stress to be over.
“It's a slow process for sure,” Walsh said. "It's nice to just come into the classroom and know everyone's going to be there and they'll have a helping hand, and you can just talk about it all day long. So, I'm sad that it's ending, but I'll be happy once the whole competition is over.”
Engineering manager for Aster Brand Jake Kloss was judging the mechanical drawing and additive manufacturing categories.
He said the group is always looking for local talent, and the MITES competition is a great place to see the work coming from Northern Michigan.
“Just through the community we were always looking for local talent,” he said. “Finding good manufacturing talent in Northern Michigan that want to stay here is a little challenging, and there's plenty of opportunity and in good work that we need."
Kloss said the group’s summer intern actually won the competition a few years prior, and getting involved with the community through competitions like this is a good way to find talent locally.
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Kloss said that he and the other judges were looking for accuracy in the pieces, as well as how hard they would be to produce.
“The ones that made the top of the list look very accurate, and the attention to detail between how the parts made off or the different seams was really something we honed in on,” he said.
Kloss said he was impressed by how the bar for these competitions has moved, saying many of the projects from the freshman and sophomore competition usually would have been around the junior or senior level just a few years back.
“The talent here is pretty amazing,” he said.
— Contact education reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey High School hosts regional MITES competition
