Recently, the tech room hosted representatives from both Shell Oil and Mine Safety Appliances (MSA).

While most students are familiar with Shell, MSA might be more of an obscure name. MSA provides safety equipment to workers in hazardous conditions.

But why would either visit Beaver Area High School?

At first glance, it may seem strange that Shell and MSA, two big corporations, have taken an interest in Beaver Area High School. However, there are relatively simple explanations. For one, Shell is building its massive cracker plant three miles away, so they would naturally want to invest in a school teaching their workers' children.

MSA is slightly more complicated. MSA has corporate offices in Cranberry. According to STAP director James Shay, MSA is using a program called EITC to donate their tax dollars directly to schools rather than through the state—and as a result, MSA just awarded Beaver Area $10,000 for STEAM education.

In these meetings, some senior members of the STAP program, mostly department heads, gave presentations to the respective corporate representative, basically laying out what is was that the program did.

"The goal of the meeting with Shell was basically to show them what STAP does," said Mr. Shay.

This was accomplished through several presentations given by students in the program.

"The kids who presented did very well," said Mr. Shay.

Sophomore STAP member Zane Kelley believes that the presentations held the interest of the companies.

Similar to the Apple visit a few months back, the representatives requested some degree of anonymity, so no direct quotes from either meeting were able to be obtained from Mr. Shay. He could, however, sum up their thoughts.

"I would say that they were extremely impressed with how our program is run," he said.

It is currently unknown whether or not either company will return to the school. However, knowing that they were impressed by our program, it is unlikely that a return visit by either would be a bad thing.