PLYMOUTH MEETING — Visitors to Central Montco Technical High School’s recent open house had a chance to tour its Plymouth Meeting campus, get information about its programs and meet the educators who share their specialties with students from the Colonial, Lower Merion, Upper Merion Area and Norristown Area school districts. Attendees were also able to learn more about CMTHS’s new Alumni Association.
When the school opened its doors (as Central Montgomery County Area Vocational Technical School) on the old Quartuccio Dairy Tract in 1967, it had cost some $2.8 million to build. A $20 million project that reconfigured the building 16 years ago added 10,400 square feet of floor space to the facility. A new teaching kitchen, retail salon and I.T.-networking area; enhanced automotive and construction trades areas; and state-of-the-art security and fire suppression systems were just a few of the project’s upgrades.
By time the school became known as CMTHS, its offerings had expanded well beyond basic craft skills and now feature 16 majors that have equipped students for entry-level jobs at graduation or admission to post-secondary institutions ranging from two-year trade schools to a variety of colleges, universities and medical schools.
Those majors currently include Allied Health, Automotive Technology, Baking & Pastry Arts, Building Trades, Collision Repair, Cosmetology, Culinary Arts, Early Childhood Education, Exercise Sciences & Rehab Therapy, Healthcare Sciences, Landscape Design, Networking Technology, Public Safety, Teacher Academy, Video Sound & Music Production and Visual Communications.
Classes are bolstered by “work-based studies” pairings that run the gamut from clinical experiences in hospitals, long-term care facilities and daycare centers to paid and non-paid internships and cooperative education placements with local businesses.
CMTHS has had a Distinguished Alumni Association since 2004, and some alums belong to its longstanding advisory committees. The decision to create an official alumni association was grounded in the widely-accepted idea that such groups have any number of benefits for both alums and their alma maters…benefits like networking opportunities (social, job-related and student recruitment), advocacy for the school, an enhanced sense of connection between former and current students and yet another vehicle for boosting a school’s public image.
Establishing “a strong networking community” is a top priority, says 1999 grad Noelle Pumo, a registered nurse who teaches Healthcare Sciences at CMTHS and has been serving as spokesman for the new group. So is “(providing) continued support in learning and growing within” the various industrial skill sets the school teaches and “(promoting) opportunities for financial and/or technical advancement” for alums as well as current CMTHS students and programs, she adds.
Pumo isn’t the only graduate who’s returned to the school to teach.
The staffers who oversee CMTHS’s student-run restaurant and bake shop – both open to the public – include Class of 1999 alums Jarrett Young, a Culinary Arts instructor, and Colleen Kriebel, a Baking & Pastry Arts instructor. Both graduated from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and have successful careers beyond CMTHS.
Other CMTHS grads interested in joining the new alumni association can find additional information at www.cmths.org and via email to [email protected] or phone call to 610-277-2301.CMTHS is located at 821 Plymouth Road, Plymouth Meeting.