(orchestra) (music) STEM Guitar is a program that started out as a National Science Foundation grant that allows us as a team to teach teachers how to use the electric guitar as a vehicle to teach STEM topics to high school, and middle school, and even elementary school students.

It allows us to take the knowledge that we teach to the teachers during the week of this training, and they could take it back to their school and use the kits that are produced here at Sinclair that are really high-quality kits.

So there's science, technology, engineering, mathematics, there's physics, there's so much stuff that can be kind of derived from this program.

We're not here to train luthiers.

We're trying to get a sophomore in Bozeman, Montana, to understand that Mrs. Johnsons fifth-grade geometry class has merit.

There's- theres two components to the program.

There's an academic component that was funded under a National Science Foundation grant, and that was the development of the curriculum.

And the curriculum can be scaled from middle school, high school, uh, community colleges, as well as up to universities just depending on what it is that the students are studying.

The STEM Guitar Lab was formulated in order to supply guitar kits to the classes that are running those.

Sinclair has a unique place in the national STEM Guitar field because we are the production center for those kits.

We use the same curriculum to teach the class, but we have the additional responsibility of making the kits and shipping them out all across the country.

(music) STEM Guitar has shipped guitar kits to 48 states.

I think the only two states that we haven't hit yet is North and South Dakota.

They've even shipped some of the guitar kits overseas.

We sell kits to schools all over the United States, including Pago Pago, American Samoa, Canada.

Our kits have gone down to Medellín, Colombia, for outreach programs.

So without the Sinclair Guitar Lab, there would be no STEM Guitar.

Here at the woodshop part of our- of our facility, it's just old fashioned woodworking, to be honest.

We will get a truckload of raw lumber.

And we take those pieces, and we'll cut them into what we call “billets.” And they're different lengths for different parts.

So if I'm building bodies, I will cut that board down into 22-inch-long pieces, and well stack ‘em on the rack.

When that's complete, then well start to assemble a body.

And we'll pull pieces off of the rack, and then we will plane them to thickness.

And then we will joint those, which is; we will trim an edge so that it's at a 90-degree angle to the face that we just made, so that when we glue them together, they're glued together at a 90-degree angle, and you get a nice flat board.

Those pieces are glued together, we'll come back the next day, we take those pieces out.

We will plane them to thickness again.

We will then sand them to a specific thickness.

And then well put those in a stack.

Theyll go over to the CNC lab across campus.

(CNC buzzing) From the builders standpoint, and in a workshop like this, the very first thing they'll do is they will pick their bodies, and their necks, and their- their fretboards, which is the playing surface on the front of the neck.

Shaping the guitar bodies would be second.

Attaching the fretboard to the neck, and shaping the neck, and getting the frets installed is another major milestone.

(sanding) Getting the body all smoothed out, and getting a clear finish applied to it to seal it and protect it, is another major task.

(music) Soldering and joining the electronics components is another major phase of the project.

Joining the body and the neck together, and then populating the body with all the hardware would be next after that.

And then finally stringing the instrument up and doing the final setup and intonation to actually get it to translate from looking like a guitar, to playing and functioning as a guitar should.

I like to pick that up at the end when it's all done and to kind of give it a test drive and see how it plays.

(electric guitar playing) (record scratch) A lot of individuals think that, and that's a common misconception in the engineering field- in any field, that you must know how to use something or play something.

In this case, playing guitar.

A lot of individuals think that you must know how to do that in order to build it.

A common, uh, analogy that I like to use is; the individuals that build the space shuttle.

They don't know how to fly the space shuttle.

But they can put the space shuttle together.

The STEM Guitar Project is highly accessible at all levels.

And in terms of requisite academic knowledge well take all comers.

So wherever you are, there are ways to make connections.

And so I wouldn't say you have to have had Physics 101 in order to be able to be successful at this course.

And that's the great thing about STEM Guitar, is it's scalable.

So whatever your audience is, you can take the materials that we provide and the process that we're showing and then make connections that are relevant to the students by saying, “here's an example in the guitar of X, Y, Z topic that we need to cover in class this week.” (music) If youre talking about math, science, social studies, we as educators have guidelines that we need to make sure students are, you know, hitting those guidelines at the end of the year, but students have a hard time seeing those- those goals and those aspirations that they need.

So it allowed me to build my other classes around this one model to make sure that students are understanding what they're learning.

When you see a student strum a guitar for the very first time that they built, like, you couldn't wipe the smile off their face with a, you know, with a fire hydrant.

Its just so amazing.

I think we try to tell people that come through the program that play guitar is, play with as many people as you can.

Get plugged in to where you can.

If you move to a new town and you can play guitar, you can find friends really quick.

If you can fix a guitar, you can find friends double quick.

We're about 15 to 17 years into the project.

The goal here is to continue to teach teachers, no matter whether we're grant funded or not.

We want to allow people to keep this thing rolling and going down the line, because it's such a great thing.

It's not just in Ohio, so if you're watching this from California or Florida, there's trainings potentially near you that you can come and take a part of.

I like knowing that my sphere of influence is larger than the small school that Im at.

I like seeing the pride on people's faces when they complete at this week here at Sinclair, as well as the students in my own classroom.

And in terms of the actual guitar process itself, I really like all the quieter aspects of it, like the fret work and working on the necks and everything to get the guitar to go from looking like an instrument to actually working like one.

(Doug playing guitar) Cool.

Building a guitar is not- it's not an everyday thing.

Its not- I don't want to say it's not simple, but if you pay attention, if you ask questions, then you'll be okay.

Every class at the end of the day, if you walk in with 10 fingers, you walk out with 10 fingers, it's a good day.

(door slams)