BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
RUMSON — Although much of the major construction at the high school is completed, there is at least one more project on the horizon.
The Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School Foundation is currently raising funds for a new Technology Education Lab at the school.
Approximately $125,000 will need to be raised to complete the project. All of those funds will be raised through donations made to the foundation.
The lab will take the space currently occupied by the Jewelry Making classroom.
Industrial Arts Supervisor, Frank Azzaro, will teach the classes, which will be broken down into three sections: Tech-Design lab will be configured for 20 students, with each module including equipment, software, curriculum; Invention and Innovations, which will use entrepreneurial skills modules to include inventing, innovating, profiting from invention and building career success; and Tech-World, which will be configured for 24 students, working in pairs on such projects as the fundamentals of manufacturing module, mechanical module, and the electricity and electronics module.
The software for these programs will be supplied by Lab-Volt, the same vendor that supplies Forrestdale Middle School’s new technology program, which is starting this year.
The Forrestdale program is similar in design to the program planned for the high school, and Tim Finian, industrial arts supervisor for Forrestdale, is helping Azzaro with “phasing the program into the RFH curriculum,” according to a press release from the high school.
Although the class is mandatory for all sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at the middle school, the class will be an elective for high school students.
The foundation has spent the past 18 months working on this project, according to foundation Vice President Hollis Colquhoun.
“The foundation is only a few years old,” said Colquhoun. “It gives grants to teachers and administrators to supply equipment or programs that the regular school budget cannot accommodate.”
Colquhoun said that at this time, the foundation has raised $65,000 from donations by corporations, grants and other foundations. She hopes that a substantial amount of the total funds needed will be raised by a benefit private cocktail party this month.
Colquhoun said she thinks it is important for the students coming from the middle school to have a continuing technical education.
“It doesn’t make sense not to follow through,” she said. “The program will have multiple levels, multiple disciplines and multiple technologies, so that people with no experience can benefit from the program.”