BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
The 110th Wing of the Michigan Air National Guard recently delivered 176 excess laptops to the Calhoun Area Career Center, providing students with valuable tools to support their technical education.
The transfer was made through the Department of Defense Computers for Learning program, administered by Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services. The program provides IT equipment to schools and nonprofit educational organizations serving students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
Tech. Sgt. Robert Zellers, equipment control officer for the 110th Wing, said the donation was part of a normally scheduled lifecycle replacement of squadron laptops.
Excess military IT equipment is first turned in to DLA, which initially offers it to other military units for reutilization. If no other commands request it, the surplus items are then made available to potential transfer or donation recipients, including schools.
That’s when the Calhoun Area Career Center submitted its request.
“We have a member in our squadron whose son attended the Calhoun Area Career Center,” Zellers said. “Word spread quickly that a local school had acquired the laptops from the 110th Wing.”
Zellers said the command is always supportive of efforts to responsibly manage excess technology and avoid environmental waste. By working through DLA, it found an opportunity to extend the life of taxpayer equipment and give back to the local community.
Paul Fedele, the career center’s networking instructor, said it supports 20 public and private schools in the county and operates as a Cisco Networking Academy, offering students the opportunity to earn certifications.
“Students do everything in my classroom,” Fedele said, “from structured cabling to maintaining their own servers.”
He said students will install solid-state drives in the donated laptops, followed by Linux operating systems.
“They will perform updates and install software such as VirtualBox, VMware, Proxmox, Apache, SSH server — whatever the curriculum calls for,” he said.
Fedele said the donation would add another layer to the real-world experience students receive at the center.
“They’ve built flight simulators for the aviation program and worked on the school’s security camera system,” he said. “Pretty much anything that technology affects, we get the call, and we go to work.”
The laptops from the Michigan Air National Guard are earmarked for use in the center’s cybersecurity program. Fedele said students will use them to work with malware and other computer viruses in a safe, offline environment that poses no risk to actual networks.
“The average high school student is asked to remember and understand curricula — English, math, history, etc. — but when they graduate, many have no marketable skills,” Fedele said. “The model in Career and Technical Education institutions like ours is based on Bloom’s taxonomy. In addition to remembering and understanding, CTE students apply, analyze, evaluate and create.”
“This is a win-win — a sustainable solution for our equipment and a significant boost for local education, ultimately contributing to a more skilled and resilient community that we are proud to serve,” Zellers said.
Please visit our website to learn more about the DoD Computers for learning program here.