Pitsco's founders – teachers Terry Salmans, Harvey Dean, and Max Lundquest.
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"Who was your favorite teacher?"
Ask anyone and they'll have an answer for you. And for most, there's a story to follow. Sometimes it was the course subject, sometimes it was the lessons or activities, but behind it all was a teacher who made it happen. That teacher was motivating, challenging, encouraging – saying the right things at the right time to spark an unrealized talent or a successful career.
Teachers and their invaluable impact on students are the reasons why Pitsco exists today.
In hindsight, Pitsco may have been started by a teacher years before the doors opened. Harvey Dean was a less-than-average high school student who didn't see a future in what he was being taught and who found himself nearly disciplined right out of school. He was offered a second chance by his shop teacher, Jim Coffey, in a class that gave him opportunities to succeed by using his head and his hands. This opportunity for success, created by the extra effort of a master teacher, became an early inspiration for Harvey – and quite possibly for Pitsco.
Motivated by Jim Coffey's influence, Harvey became a teacher after college in the small town of Weleetka, Oklahoma. Here, through industrial-arts classes taught to culturally diverse and disadvantaged students, Harvey used hands-on learning to help students bridge the gaps between curriculum and relevance, the same way he had been taught by Jim Coffey. In the evenings, he used those same ideas to teach Native Americans leather craft to overcome the cultural and language challenges his adult students faced.
Following several years of successful teaching, Harvey pursued a Master's and Education Specialist degree at Pittsburg State University (then Kansas State Teacher's College). It was here that he met those who would shape Pitsco's future. Dr. Vic Sullivan, then chair of the Industrial Education department, instilled in his students and colleagues a need for change in the way industrial arts was taught. Some of those who heard Dr. Sullivan's call for change were local teachers Max Lundquest and Terry Salmans. Max and Terry were colleagues in Pittsburg's middle-school and high-school industrial-arts programs. They had recently begun developing a new industrial-education program to reflect new methods, materials, and processes in the industry. This development led them to consider writing a book outlining their curriculum ideas. When Dr. Sullivan learned that Max and Terry were considering a book about their industrial-education program, he introduced them to Harvey, encouraging them all to work together on the project. Ideas that seemed appropriate for a book instead led to the decision to start a company. This new company would merge their newly developed activities and ideas with all the components required for completion of the hands-on activity. With each founder contributing $50, the Pittsburg Industrial Teachers Service Company (P.I.T.S.C.O.) was born in 1971.