The Wasatch campus of Utah Valley University was abuzz with intellectual activity on Wednesday afternoon as select Wasatch County High School upperclassmen met for the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, or CAPS.
Some students were refining products. A few were recording podcasts. Many were studying data they collected about local wildlife.
Tate Wright and Maddie Chambers, 18-year-old seniors, and Gavin Lange, a 17-year-old junior, demonstrated the latest prototype of their 3D-printed knee brace, a project that arose from a partnership with local physical therapist Dr. Taylor Bluth. Bluth often sees patients recovering from total joint replacements who want to stay active.
The problem, Wright said, is that lateral motion causes the 3D knee brace to become misaligned with the patellar tendon, causing pain from athletic movement. The knee brace is intended to mimic the movement of the patellar tendon more naturally, providing a pain-free experience even when lifting weights or kitesurfing on Deer Creek.
For Chambers, the project is a crash course on biomechanics, which she will study next year at the Colorado School of Mines. Wright, meanwhile, is a budding entrepreneur excited to put the product on the market.
The district’s CAPS program attracts students with a broad range of interests. Students enroll in one of six courses: business, marketing and entrepreneurship; digital design and software development; medicine and health; engineering and industrial design; environment and agriculture; and innovate, a course where students develop products and businesses.
CAPS Director Weston Broadbent said that at any given time, students are working on 50 to 60 projects in partnership with local business owners, doctors, professors and scientists.
For example, the Utah Department of Natural Resources is a longtime partner of the program.
Among many other ongoing projects, students are using cameras to monitor the Provo River for river otters.
“The DNR is like, ‘Hey, we’re understaffed. We have these questions we’d really like to know.’ We put students on those projects,” said CAPS agriculture teacher Matthew Zierenberg. “They don’t have time to go and monitor for otters? Well, we’ve got time.”
CAPS is the cornerstone program of the Career and Technical Education program in the Wasatch County School District, which gives students professional experience as scaffolding for their future careers.
The district has been awarded more than $500,000 in state and federal grant funding in the past two weeks to support career and technical education programs.
The lion’s share comes from a Catalyst Center grant administered by the Utah State Board of Education. The grant program was established after the approval of House Bill 447 in May 2025 and awards funding “to support innovative programs that strengthen career pathways and expand opportunities for students across the state,” according to a Utah State Board of Education press release.
For Broadbent, the passage of the bill came as a pleasant surprise — especially since it was approved during the 2025 general session when the Legislature was “taking money from a lot of areas.”
After the establishment of the grant program, the state board of education received 35 applications across Utah requesting more than $200 million in funding. Stephanie Patton, director of the grant program, said over $100 million was awarded to 28 schools and school districts in February.
Wasatch County School District applied for funding last autumn and received $395,616 from the Catalyst Center grant.
Broadbent said some of those funds will be spent in the next few months and that most of the equipment to support career and technical education will be purchased by May 2027.
Much of the funds will be used to purchase industry-grade equipment for the new Deer Creek High School, which opens in August. This includes broadcasting equipment for student reporters, a CNC (computer numerical control) machine for manufacturing and a plasma cutter for welding and woodshop. The new equipment falls in line with the district’s mission of ensuring equitable education opportunities between the two high schools.
The school district will also be purchasing three vehicles using grant funds.
Broadbent explained that two cars will be used to transport students to the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus for the CAPS program, eliminating an entry barrier for students who cannot transport themselves. The third will be a food truck, allowing culinary students to develop their own meals, while CAPS business students will have the opportunity to operate it as if it were their own restaurant.
The grant will also allow for CAPS to expand to include an education pathway. The funds will help temporarily pay the salary and benefits of the education teacher.
The high school already has a “Teaching As a Profession” course, but integrating with CAPS will create more internships and teaching experiences for students.
Reese Phillips, a 17-year-old senior, is a current student of the program. She hopes to become a special education teacher and is currently paired with a Timpanogos Middle School student studying U.S. history as part of a semester-long internship.
“There’s a lot that goes into helping one student, but what’s been really rewarding for me as I’m working with this specific student is seeing that this individualized education and adaptive care … has just given them so much more confidence,” Phillips said.
Kasie Payne, the manager of the education program, said Phillips is unique among her peers for her interest in teaching.
“We have a lot of rhetoric that is a little bit anti-education,” she said. “Some of their parents, or maybe family or community members, don’t necessarily believe that education might be the best career path. It’s been hard over the last couple of years to see that shift.”
But the financial support the school district has given career and technical education programs like CAPS and “Teaching As a Profession” has heartened her. Clearly, it’s influenced students, too.
“I have quite a few colleagues now that have gone through my program,” she said. “They’re choosing to come back here because they know that our district supports teachers. They saw it as students. They see the money that comes and the funding that comes and the support that, overall, our district shows.”
The school district also recently received a $105,190 Perkins V grant. Perkins V is a federal program that provides nearly $1.4 billion annually for career and technical education programs.
The district will be using the entirety of the grant to purchase an Anatomage Table for Deer Creek High School.
The school district already owns one Anatomage Table, albeit a decade-old model, that sits in a lab at the Wasatch campus.
The tables simulate 3D models of real animals and cadavers that donated their bodies to science. It gives students exposure to the inner workings of the human body and allows them to perform digital dissections without the cleanup.
Max Avery, a 17-year-old junior and budding neurosurgeon, said his favorite pastime while at CAPS is playing with the table. Ask him for a demonstration, and Avery will peel back layers of a digitized body, revealing a tumor on the brainstem.
Avery’s CAPS project involves writing case studies to challenge his fellow health students in high school courses. He’s hoping that, next year, he can sink his teeth into a CAPS project more centered on neuroscience — though his mentor, Midway resident Dr. Edwin Stevens, noted that writing case studies has been a great learning foundation for the student.
Stevens is a former interventional neuroradiologist and professor in the radiology and imaging sciences department at the University of Utah. He has been a volunteer teacher in the CAPS medicine and health pathway since 2017.
“When I retired, my wife said, ‘You better find something to do,’” he joked.
Over the past three years, CAPS students have assisted Stevens in developing his pet project: an electronic shoe insert that vibrates when a certain percentage of the wearer’s body weight is placed on that foot.
Stevens came up with the idea for the device when recovering from a broken leg. His orthopedist instructed him to only put 25% of his body weight on that leg, but Stevens had no idea how he could precisely measure that.
With the assistance of CAPS students, Stevens is slowly working toward the solution. He said CAPS students continue to amaze him.
For example, 18-year-old senior Iris Beijar sequenced the genomes of snails gathered from springs around the Provo River. Now, she’s studying how environmental factors, like the water’s pH level and temperature, may have resulted in epigenetic changes.
“When I started medical school, we were just learning about the helix,” Stevens laughed.
For Beijar, the sky’s the limit in terms of career aspirations.
“I want to do regenerative medicine, like tissue regeneration, cell regeneration, tissue scaffolding and sort of being behind the scenes for saving lives. I want to do research and development, too, and maybe pharmaceuticals. I know I want to get some sort of graduate degree, either a Ph. D. or master’s in Sweden,” she listed off. “And then after that, I hope to maybe open my own biotech lab.”