Hypertherm Awards announces recipients of its 2023 Spark Something Great educational grant

Hypertherm has announced the recipients of its 2023 Spark Something Great educational grant. There were 12 programs selected from a pool of 104 applications representing public schools, vocational schools, and colleges from throughout the United States and Canada.

Here are this year’s recipients:

Taylorsville Attendance Center -Taylorsville, MS
Northwest Louisiana Technical Community College – Shreveport, LA
Shafter High School – Shafter, CA
Christel House Academy South – Indianapolis, IN
Stanton Community Schools – Stanton, NE
Grundy Area Vocational Center – Morris, IL
Toledo Area Sheet Metal JATC – Rossford, OH
Burns Flat-Dill City Schools – Burns Flat, OK
Kustom Built Cars Educational Workshop – Grand Junction, CO
Moran ISD – Moran, TX
Eastern Pulaski School Corporation – Winimac, IN
Waterloo Career Center - Waterloo, IA

Now in its ninth year, the Spark Something Great grant program is designed to support the next generation of metalworkers by ensuring students train on the equipment found in workplaces. Each of the 12 schools will receive a Hypertherm Powermax45 XP plasma system and in-person training from a Hypertherm industrial cutting expert.

“We continue to see strong interest in our grant program as schools grapple with limited budgets and increasing enrollment,” said Stephen Bruner, who manages Hypertherm’s educational program. “Many of the schools from where we received applications are trying to teach 100, 200, and even 300 students with a single—and often very old—plasma cutter. Many schools have no plasma at all. Although we cannot award a plasma system to every deserving school, we are grateful to give more students an opportunity to cut, gouge, and mark metal with a Powermax45 XP.”

In addition to its annual grant program, Hypertherm provides educational discounts to schools and students, and offers educators its “Plasma Cutting Technology: Theory and Practice” curriculum as a free download. To date, thousands of teachers have acquired lesson plans helping standardize the teaching of plasma cutting to students in North America and beyond. Hypertherm also offers ProNest for Education, a free program that places ProNest CAD/CAM nesting software in schools using CNC applications.