Fast forward to the present, about 20 miles away from Beaverton, at Mid Michigan Community College in Harrison, where Steven Fosgard runs the plastics technology program, which is about to graduate its first class of students in May. He was hired in 2013 to design the program with seed money from a highly coveted $714,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Fosgard worked in injection molding and quality assurance before getting into education. He turned to the plastics businesses in the area for input about the certificate and associate-degree programs to be offered and three businesses in particular about equipment.
“Even though we teach all of the major processes, our focus is thermoforming,” Fosgard said. “We have a very unique machine. It is the only one in existence and the only one that will ever be in existence. It was built by all three machine manufacturers of Beaverton for our students. It was a collaboration of Modern Machinery, Brown Machine and Lyle Industries.”