May 19, 2025 – Beloved characters. Magical journeys. A quest for qualities we didn’t know we had within us. These are some of the reasons classic stories captivate us. But what if they could also be ways for STEM outreach – planting seeds for future careers in manufacturing?
That’s exactly what one husband and wife team are doing at Seymour Primary School, a rural Title 1 school in East Tennessee. Ashlie Sheriff is a first-grade teacher, and Stephen Sheriff is a research associate for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT). They’re both problem solvers eager to push the envelope of creative learning. So, when The Wizard of Oz was announced as this year’s choice for Book Bash, the wheels began turning. Together on their patio, they brainstormed how to make a yellow brick road and finally landed on the Tin Man.
From Books to Careers
Now in its seventh year, Book Bash is a community-wide program where teachers in every grade at Seymour Primary read aloud the same selected book to students over the course of a month. Every child gets their own copy, and each week they have hands-on STEM activities tied to the book.
Assistant Principal Dr. Carissa Mitchell explains, “We want to show the kids that reading a physical book can be connected to all these different things in your life. So, when you read the book, it gives you an interest, and through that interest, you follow it down a path and you can go somewhere.”
One of those paths could one day be in advanced manufacturing, filled with careers they’ve likely never heard of like casting and forging. The land of Oz provides a familiar example: the Tin Man. Metalcasting is an industry that will desperately need them in the next 10 years. Introducing the art of casting to 700 K-3 students now is all about inspiration.
Stephen shares, “As engineers we get to do nerdy things like make models on computers and 3D print them. When we show the model to the kids, we watch their eyes light up. And maybe there’s one or two that really dig it. Their light bulb goes off; maybe they’ll go on to be a maker!”
Working with the kids daily, Ashlie adds, “They’re going to be the future of America. We get to show them that there’s a world of possibility and that they can achieve or do whatever they want if they’re interested in it.”
Bringing the Tin Man to Life
That interest starts with a 3D printer, a box of sand that resembles kinetic sand, and a tabletop furnace that can melt tin at 600 degrees. For more than a year, Stephen has helped create and run hands-on workshops with middle and high school students for the IACMI-led METAL (Metallurgical Engineering Trades Apprenticeship & Learning) program. He walks through how they used two methods to make a 7.5-pound, 14-inch-high Tin Man: investment casting for the body and sand casting for the head.
“We wanted to show the students a process that was done over several days in a few minutes,” says Stephen. “So, we went with the cooking show style, where you demonstrate one step and then show a finished example.”
Step by step, the Tin Man comes alive. Collaborating with the UT School of Art foundry, Stephen starts with a Computer Aided Design (CAD) that shows digital images of the body in seven parts. Those images become a plastic model with a desktop 3D printer. Once glued together, the plastic Tin Man is dipped in a ceramic slurry, that looks like nacho cheese, multiple times. Baking it at 1500° F degrees in a kiln for 8 hours vaporizes the plastic and leaves behind a hard shell that they bury in sand and fill with molten aluminum. Once cool, they chip off the ceramic shell to find a solid metal Tin Man. There’s just one problem – he’s missing his head.
For the head, Stephen starts with similar steps of CAD and 3D printing a plastic replica. But sand casting has the advantage of being able to reuse the same pattern again and again. After pounding a special mix called green sand, he presses the plastic head into the sand to make an impression that he can pour molten tin into. He finally has a complete Tin Man.
At the end, there are oohs and ahhs and 20 hands shoot up with questions. But one beaming first grader has this to say: “That was AWESOME!” That enthusiasm brings tears to Dr. Mitchell’s eyes.
“This is stuff they don’t get to see or even think about,” she says. “A couple of kids were asking, ‘Where does this even come from? Where did you get those pellets? How did you turn that into this?’ This is so much real life and they like that.”
Scaling up Innovation
Another teacher shares that most of her students are still raving about last year’s activity around Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—casting chocolate bars. Stephen also started with CAD and 3D printing but then made molds with a plastic thermoforming machine. Every child got to eat their own mini chocolate bar; what’s not to love?
The concept of casting chocolate is nothing new, but IACMI—The Composites Institute® which leads the METAL workforce training program has spent several months experimenting with how to scale up what Ashlie and Stephen did for multiple outreach events. We started with people we knew for “bring your kid to work day” at the new Innovation South facility at the UT Research Park at Cherokee Farm. We made some modifications for a Texas A&M STEM event that drew 3,200 people. Then an IACMI partner at Penn State Behrend put their own touch on it for their STEAM Fair, and now the school is incorporating chocolate casting into camps this summer for ages 6-14.
Innovation is a work in progress. You try things, you learn what doesn’t work, and you find a better solution. Having the freedom to try out new ideas and fail and iterate quickly is one of the reasons Stephen and Ashlie are already looking to what they’ll do next year. Ashlie’s motivation is clear.
“I just want students to love learning,” shares Ashlie. “You never know what idea is going to spark a child. Letting them get hands-on, letting them see and touch and feel and learn this way, they will remember this!”
By pouring their hearts into these projects, the Sheriffs are quietly making a difference in their community and beyond. In the wise words of the Wizard, “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”
