Students from the Crookston High School Community Projects class recently completed a new reception desk for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The desk was delivered to the church by the students, along with instructor Travis Oliver, earlier this month.
The project was completed by seniors Jay Reese, Lennon Prudhomme, and Dexter Janek, along with junior Grant Funk. The desk, which took about two and a half months to complete, features several distinct elements, including the church’s logo embossed into the wood.
“We made an L-shaped desk for the church here to greet people on Sundays, and we added a drawer. There are three levels to the drawer, so there are places to put papers,” said Funk. “There’s a place that they can put computers and papers where you sit underneath, and they have adjustable feet to adjust the height of the desk to where they want it.”
Other projects completed by this group in the 2025-26 school year included a welding project and the high school’s greenhouse. The students credited Oliver for being an effective instructor and for helping them learn and develop their skills throughout the school year.
“I thought it was a cool experience because he would let us make mistakes so then we could learn from it, and he would just show us how that will happen in the real world, and we got to learn from that and keep on going,” said Funk.
These four classmates can now put their new skills to practical use in their daily lives, either professionally or personally.
“I think it’ll be good to have these skills for a handyman, so if anything breaks around your house in the future, you’ll be able to fix it,” said Funk. “And it’s just a little bit of carpentry work that now you know how to do that you didn’t before you took a shop class at Crookston High School.”
