Congressman Kennedy, Tri-County Regional Staff Visit Franklin EMC

Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School administrators and the superintendent together with Congressman Joe Kennedy toured the Franklin EMC Corporation facilities, one of the stops on Kennedy’s STEM tour of Massachusetts, Aug. 20.  

EMC is a leading cloud storage company that works with Fortune-500 corporations and whose products are featured in summer blockbuster films like Paranoia.

STEM is an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. But as educators like Tri-County RVTHS know, it is much more than just a list of technical fields. STEM symbolizes the mingling and cooperation of these fields as a foundation of education. Tri-County RVTHS and EMC have a long-standing partnership.

EMC offers an annual $1,000 scholarship to Tri-County students and regularly hires Tri-County grads. The shining star, however, is EMC’s co-op program. As part of the program, Tri-County seniors work at the EMC facilities in the summer and, during the school year, every other week of classes. The students face new challenges and learn priceless information about their fields, while receiving a paycheck for their hard work and applying the skills they have learned in Tri-County’s Electronics and Engineering (STEM) programs to real-world work.

The EMC tour began with a roundtable discussion about EMC and its practices. 

Ten Tri-County students or grads (a mix of full-time employees, interns, and four participants of the co-op program) were present during Kennedy’s tour of the EMC facility. 

Kennedy’s tour has helped put the spotlight on the importance of STEM education and on educational programs like Tri-County’s, which continues to innovate and prepare students to meet the future needs of industry in America.

Tri-County RVTHS, located at 147 Pond Street, Franklin, is a recipient of the High Schools That Work Gold Achievement Award and serves the communities of Franklin, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Norfolk, North Attleboro, Plainville, Seekonk, Sherborn, Walpole, and Wrentham.