Manufacturing Day shows St. Joseph students local businesses

By Ashley Luthans

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with several local businesses, hosted its annual Manufacturing Day for students on Thursday morning.

The students began their morning at BioZyme and were able to tour the facility.

President and CEO of BioZyme Lisa Norton said she was excited to help the students see what manufacturing facilities actually look like.

“I think it’s really hard as you grow up … I mean it’s really hard to figure all that out,” Norton said. “Even when you go to college and, you know, even if you have advanced degrees, it’s still pretty not real. So I think the more that you can see that’s real and can kind of frame in your own mind what that means to you … then that really helps you make a good career decision.”

One of the attendees, Central High School student Lanaya Shifflett, said she attended the event because she is interested in pursuing a career in biomedical science and wanted to get an idea of different jobs in that field.

“It gives us more of a broad perspective of what we can do with biomedical science and give people more opportunities of what they can learn more (of) outside of school,” Shifflett said.

Another Central student, Fatuma Usman, said that she had fun learning about how manufacturing facilities run.

“It’s fun knowing where everything comes from and how it’s produced,” Usman said.