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Thanks to students at Austin High School, downtown Austin has received another element that adds just a little bit more pride to the community.

Discover Austin has paired with Ryan Stanley’s Riverland Community College arch welding class to deliver 32 metal signs featuring the state of Minnesota with Austin cut into it.

The signs, which you may have seen already, are being placed in the planters on Main Street.

“We reached out to the kiddos to see about getting new and improved signs,” Discover Austin Director Nancy Schnable said. “Filling the planters brings a sense of hometown pride to the downtown area.”

The class, which is housed in the annex at Austin High School, is a class for students to gain college credits through Riverland.

Stanley said that the signs were made on a plasma cutter designed by the students and himself. The cutter itself is an upgrade to existing machinery the students used at the school.

Stanley said that the signs were created over a two-day period and were quickly brought to downtown where they have started going up.

He went on to say that not only does it add a little something extra to downtown, it’s a benefit of real life learning for the 14 students who are in the class.

“Having access to equipment like our new XFORCE CNC Plasma Table System from MWSSCO gives the students much needed knowledge when they enter the workforce,” Stanley said. “They will see these machines in industry as manufacturing becomes more and more automated.”

At the same time, projects like this also give students a chance to become a bigger part of their community.

“It’s making a community connection,” Stanley said. “It’s paramount, if we can, to do more things for the community that gives students more buy-in into  the community.”

In turn, Schnable said that money will be donated to the robotics program that Stanley is overseeing.

In that regard the benefits span over multiple fronts.

“It’s a win-win for everybody,” Schnable said.