Many students here at The Morgan School have always wanted a better way to get involved — a way to put themselves out there and prepare for the real world; this trip last week was the first stepping stones to achieving that goal for those in the tech community, introducing the blossoming partnership between our school and Bausch Advanced Technologies.
The Field Trip
On January 10th, 2025, senior students, Ryan Gray, Michael DeRenzo, and Nina Fishman, along with supervisors Mr. Neri, Mr. Madura, and our community partner who helps set up these meetings with local businesses, Bob Warner, took a bus at 12:45p.m to Bausch’s facilities in Clinton, CT, to take a tour, and see what they do in the company.
“The purpose of the visit was to kind of get us and the kids some exposure to what’s going on there,” said Mr. Neri, Morgan’s engineering teacher. “We want to set up a partnership where we can make small parts for them here in our workshop.”
Bausch Advanced Technologies
Bausch Advanced Technologies is a manufacturer of medical technology, primarily focused on manufacturing syringes and filling their own IV bags, getting them to those in need.
Mr. Neri used to work there before becoming a teacher here at Morgan, and described a little more about what they do as a company. “They make aseptic filling machines, essentially for pharmaceutical manufacturing,” stated Mr. Neri. “If they don’t make these machines that fill IV bags, when you go to the hospital, and you need an IV drip, you can’t do that without the people that manufacture it.”
The Partnership
When the tech department at Morgan and employees at Bausch decided to pursue this partnership together, they were aiming to have students at Morgan help manufacture some parts for Bausch, due to staffing issues, and in return, students would gain real world experience in the field and have internship opportunities – potentially even getting directly hired after high school.
“The experience of actually making it, or the experience of going there on an internship, coding, whether it’s for engineering, assembly, machining, accounting, is something really cool for students to have,” said Mr. Neri.
“Whether it’s internships or, like, after school jobs, you go there for a couple of hours and you work. They’ve had some staffing issues as well, so we can take care of small things that might take us a little bit longer, and it just takes some pressure off of them.”
Real World Application
Mr. Neri is especially enthusiastic about the introduction of real world deadlines and experience as working as part of a team in a company. “In the real world, if you deliver a part three days late, that’s money lost,” said Mr. Neri. “It takes away the hand holding of school, getting students that experience of working in the real world as part of a team. It shows that, like, what we do here can apply to the real world outside of school.”
It’s Future Effects on Students
Ryan Gray, a participating student on the field trip to Bausch, was primarily interested in the internship part of the partnership. “I was interested in what Bausch had to offer in terms of internships and for our school,” Gray stated. “It’s really easy to just get involved in something like that. Bausch does the training and everything…. They teach you if you don’t know too much, like, you could shadow an engineer and work your way up to that type of job without a degree.”
It’s exciting for students like Gray because he knows that this will only expand these beneficial opportunities for future generations of tech students in Morgan like the ones in his community. “It brings me excitement in that there’s going to be more people going into the engineering field,” said Gray.
“It means a lot in that the future generations are going to go through the same stuff that I do and be able to have these opportunities.”
When it Will be in Place
This groundbreaking partnership is, however, still in its infancy. Mr. Neri would like to get this moving quicker, as the students who are currently interested graduate this year, as he stated, “it might not be this semester… ideally, I would like to get this started before the end of the year to benefit current students and any others interested. Anyone can be a part of this exciting movement, after all!”
