Northern Indiana: November 2025 Highlights
Innovation In Action
Each month, we celebrate the stories of Innovation Accelerator teachers and students making a difference across Indiana and beyond.
Quick Hits:
A three-school Regional PLTW Showcase brought 30 students together to spotlight CS, biomedical, and engineering pathways for community and business leaders.
AMP Lab Outreach has already welcomed 200+ ninth graders this fall, while 95 community mentors are actively supporting around 150 student businesses in development.
A $500 3D-printing supplies grant is fueling more prototyping, alongside a $15,000 PLTW request for VEX Robotics kits to update Principles of Engineering resources.
New Venture Development students designed a themed multi-floor building design project tied to the Friends in Low Places series, topped off with a Zoom guest speaker reinforcing the value of taking moonshots.
Three schools, one showcase, and students who loved learning together
Ben Modlin: Mishawaka High School
Photos courtesy of Ben Modlin
Ben Modlin helped bring a Regional PLTW Showcase to life through a collaboration between Mishawaka High School, Penn High School, and Riley High School. The event gathered 30 students total across the three schools and centered on showing the breadth of PLTW to the wider community. As Ben put it, “Our goal was to showcase to local business leaders about PLTW and all of our offerings to include Computer Science, Biomedical Science, and Engineering.”
The showcase welcomed parents, administrators, community business leaders, Chamber of Commerce members, and local politicians: creating a real-world audience for student work and program impact. One highlight of the day was a tour through the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory, giving students a chance to experience an advanced STEM environment beyond their own schools.
For Ben, the best part was what happened between the students themselves. “The students loved collaborating among other schools,” he shared. This is an outcome that reflects why a reason why he sees PLTW and entrepreneurship as a natural pairing. Both push students to think beyond the bell schedule, work on real-world timelines, and connect what they know to problems that actually need solving.
Looking ahead, Ben is hoping to revive a local design competition between the three schools, building on the momentum of the showcase and keeping that cross-school collaboration going. The showcase proved students are ready for it. The question is whether the adults can keep up!
Outreach, mentors, and programs - oh my!
Carissa Lahrman: The AMP Lab at Electric Works
Photos courtesy of Carissa Lahrman
Carissa Lahrman is watching the Amp Lab pipeline work in real time. This fall alone, more than 200 ninth graders have toured Amp Lab at Electric Works, and many of them are already “absolutely stoked” to enroll for part of their junior and senior years. The Outreach Program she runs is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: spark interest early and help students see themselves in entrepreneurship before they ever pick a pathway.
Across four programs, high schoolers can explore entrepreneurship through hands-on studios, music-industry ventures, banking internships, or robotics capstone experiences. Since 2023, Outreach has reached over 4,500 unique students, and Carissa is already seeing the payoff. Students are enrolling because of a tour, a studio experience, or even word of mouth.
This semester also brought a huge mentorship win. With about 150 student businesses in development at Electric Works (plus 39 music-entrepreneurship students), Amp Lab activated 95 community mentors to meet with teams and solo founders. Carissa shared that nearly 200 teams were able to sit with a mentor personalized to their idea, personality, and goals. As she puts it, “those ‘outside eyes’ offer valuable perspective and strengthen the work we do with students internally.” Amp Lab also supports the mentors by building connections among them, so they can tap each other for specialized expertise when student teams need it most.
You can see that ripple effect in students like Yahir G. He first discovered Amp Lab on a tour, and now he’s a second-year student leading outreach experiences for ninth graders, sharing his story and showing what’s possible. In a short time, he’s grown into a determined dual business owner, representing Amp Lab at major community events and continuing to carve a path that keeps widening. He recently returned from photographing an event in New York City alongside mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and he is now preparing to photograph the opening match of the FIFA World Cup in in Mexico City.
Between the packed tours, student-led outreach, and mentors leaning in deeply, Amp Lab is making entrepreneurship feel possible now, not someday, and Carissa’s work is helping more students than ever see themselves in that future.
A grant-fueled boost to prototyping season.
Mary Albrecht: Hanover Central High School
Mary’s engineering students are about to have a lot more freedom to make. She recently secured a Hanover School Education Foundation grant specifically for 3D printing supplies, unlocking about $500 worth of filament and materials (thats an estimated 20-25 spools of filament) for her engineering courses. With new printers already in place through other funding, this grant means students can now print faster, better, and more often as they design and prototype their ideas.
What makes it even better, is that students had a say in how the money would be spent. “The fun part was that I was able to talk to them and say that I had the grant… we spent [class] looking on Amazon for different types of filament,” letting students weigh color, strength, and the kinds of projects they want to build next.
And while the foundation grant came through her own initiative, the next step was sparked by the STARTedUP community. During the 2025–26 Innovation Accelerator in-person kickoff, another PLTW educator mentioned a grant opportunity Mary hadn’t been considering yet, so she went for it. Mary applied for a PLTW grant, requesting $15,000 to acquire VEX Robotics kits and related equipment for her Principles of Engineering class. The goal is to strengthen the robotics program and address a real barrier: outdated resources that limit what students can learn and build.
Now she’s in the fingers-crossed and waiting to hear back. But either way, the story already has a win baked in: a classroom stocked for bigger prototypes, students excited because they had a hand in choosing what’s coming, and a reminder that sometimes one quick teacher conversation opens the door to a whole new level of opportunity.
Asking for the moon & sticking the landing on Zoom.
Kris Fleming: Hanover Central High School
Kris Fleming’s New Venture Development students have been deep in the world of Friends in Low Places this semester, tracking how Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood built their Nashville honky-tonk from the ground up. After each episode, students respond to reflective questions, then roll into a culminating project: teams design a themed, multi-floor building where each group owns one floor and develops products, services, or features that bring their business concept to life. With 30 students across two classes, this year’s themes range from Fortnite to Cities Around the World.
But the series didn’t just stay on the screen. Kris went one step further and reached out to the real business behind it, and to her students’ surprise, the answer came back fast! James Garrido, Director of Operations at Friends in Low Places, was invited to Zoom into both classes. Students researched him ahead of time and came prepared with strong questions, and even with just 30 minutes per class, the conversation energized their thinking. But what stayed with students most was his bigger message: show up, stay coachable, and keep building relationships.
For Kris, the moment was also personal. She decided to practice what she teaches and take a shot she wasn’t sure would work. “What is the worst that can happen — they say no!” she stated. Instead, James was all-in from the start, even inviting future visits to Nashville. That ‘yes’ flipped a switch for Krisina and her students alike. As she put it, “I will definitely reach out to the impossible people as I now know they might not be so impossible!”
And she’s not slowing down. With her classroom ecosystem growing fast this month, Krisina is already lining up the next moon-shot, because now her students have seen what happens when you ask big, show up ready, and let opportunity surprise you.
