Colleen Hroncich
Thales Academy was founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Bob Luddy, who was frustrated when he realized how poorly educated workers in his plant had been. “We had individuals working in the plant who could understand one inch or two inches but not fractions,” he told the Cato Institute. “It shocked me.”
From its modest beginnings—30 students meeting in an office building—Thales Academy has grown to 13 campuses in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, educating more than 6,800 students. Each school follows a classical, college-prep curriculum that blends structured learning with hands-on technical electives while keeping tuition remarkably affordable.
One of the more unique aspects of Thales is the optional Luddy Institute of Technology (LIT) for high schoolers, a focused program that introduces advanced skills such as computer-aided design (CAD), Python programming, 3D printing, and electronics. The program culminates in a senior capstone project where students receive a budget of $450 and a full year to solve a real-world problem of their choosing. This allows students to learn to collaborate, innovate, and work through failure—just like they would in a professional setting.
Last summer, Thales launched a new middle school industrial arts program, a required hands-on, project-based course that covers fundamental concepts in engineering, electronics, woodworking, and tool usage and safety. Kim Tully, a chemical engineer who began teaching at LIT nearly a decade ago, leads the new program.
“The students have enthusiastically embraced learning how to use all the tools and create things,” she says. “That’s what we’re looking for—the feeling that students get when they say, ‘Okay, I have a problem,’ and you teach them through the engineering design cycle to solve the problem and envision a solution. And then you teach them how to use the tools to actually make the solution possible. They get that amazing feeling of accomplishment at the end, when they’ve actually created something.”
One problem Kim faced in getting the new program up and running was the lack of a good, hands-on industrial arts curriculum. So the school decided to create its own, with Luddy Institute of Technology students taking the lead in writing workbooks for the middle school students. “They learn InDesign and format the books. They do all the photographs—they learn Photoshop. They help design the experiments, and they create the kits that we take to the schools to actually do the experiments,” she says. The students, including some who continue working with Thales while in college, are paid for the work they do designing the industrial arts program.
To simplify the program, they are creating learning boards, which are essentially simulators that provide a hands-on experience. For example, students worked with a top mechanic to create a learning board to teach how to change brakes. They bought Toyota Corolla parts and fabricated the learning board out of a wooden stand and all the parts. “You don’t necessarily want to tell your teacher, ‘Okay, climb under the bottom of that car with those kids and point out these bits and pieces,’” Kim says. The learning board “has the actual wheel and the brakes and the suspension system. And they outlined the things that a student is supposed to learn from an interaction with this board. Then we have a pilot in the classroom to see how effective it is and how enthusiastic the kids are.”
There’s also a vocational arts program, which includes life skills such as sewing, cooking, and home repair. As in the industrial arts program, the vocational arts courses are produced by subject matter experts collaborating with students. For instance, they brought in an expert quilter who previously worked on curriculum design at Wake Technical Community College to develop the sewing course. “She designs the patterns that they’re going to sew, and the steps and all that. Then the students practice those patterns with her to help work out the quirks of the steps,” Kim explains. “They write everything in a nice step-by-step format for her and do all the photographs for her. They also do things like crossword puzzles to reinforce vocabulary and other types of activities that they design that go in the workbook to help reinforce whatever the topic is that they’re learning.”
Students spend one quarter (nine-week period) of the school year in industrial arts and one in vocational arts. One workbook covers three weeks, with a lesson for each day, along with vocabulary and activities to reinforce the lessons. So students will cover more than one topic per quarter. Each Thales Academy school follows the same program, although the timing may differ depending on the size of the school and the staffing. “We tried to make the experience for the teacher as easy as possible,” says Kim. “They get the workbook. They get the kit. We set up their rooms for them and custom build tool cabinets with all their tools in them. We select and test all their tools and make sure that they are working properly for them. We do all their training; we also provide them with slide decks and answer keys to the workbooks.”
Eventually, the Thales Academy industrial and vocational arts courses may be made available to teachers and families beyond the school, including homeschoolers. “We did write with the idea in mind that it should work on its own,” Kim says. “So if this were to be something in the future that would be available for homeschoolers, they would obviously get all of those materials. And then we have shopping lists for the kits, and all the items are easy to source, so it would be very feasible.”
The primary mission of Thales Academy is to provide affordable, high-quality education. Tuition is intentionally low, which is accomplished in part by having an efficient model without a lot of administrative bloat. All campuses follow a shared curriculum, reducing the need for custom content development or duplicated efforts at each site. The school is also participating in North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program, which should fully cover tuition for some families.