A building construction class at Richland Northeast built a screen for nursing mothers for the neonatal unit at Palmetto Richland. Pictured (l- r) are Robert Clark, Carlos Cruz, Jordan Kaniaupio, Omar McRae, and Arriel Perez. Sometimes all it takes is being in the right place at the right time. For woodworker David Pietras, the right place is Richland Northeast High School, and the right time is now. Pietras, owner of David Pietras Custom Woodwork, is finishing up his first year as RNE's building construction teacher. As a practiced cabinet maker, he is used to filling all sorts of design requirements.

Theresa Counts- Davis, Richland School District Two's Career & Technology Education coordinator, told him about a very particular design required by Palmetto Richland's Neonatal Center. She put Pietras in touch with Kathy Hornsby, a neonatal intensive care nurse.

What the Neonatal Center needed was a mobile nursing screen for its new mothers. "They make them commercially, but not the way she wanted them made," Pietras said. "She told me what she wanted, and I came up with a design that would fit her needs. We made a full size prototype to take to Neonatal Center to see how it worked."

What Pietras and his first- block RNE students thought would be a good height turned out to be too tall, so they made it smaller, changed the wheel configuration a little, then took their revised model to show Hornsby. Palmetto ordered two more. The hospital is covering the cost of the materials, plus a small additional amount to help the RNE program buy additional equipment. To Pietras, the biggest plus was having a real- life project for his students.

"I knew this was something the kids in my program could handle," he said, pointing out that because the students are with him for only an hour and a half each day, and school was closed for Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, it took more than two months to complete the first screen.

In addition, the students have been working on a recurve bow.

"We got the approval from Dr. Watson," Pietras said. "The students have to bring in a permission slip from their parents. We're not going to shoot any arrows. We're doing it because it's a complex problem with a lot of free shaping, curve laminating, and such. We're doing it for the challenge."