Skills for the Future: Columbia Falls graduates first class in Welding Technology

Columbia Falls High School is set to celebrate its inaugural class of graduates from the school’s Welding Technology CTS program this spring.

The program, a collaborative project between the high school and the Running Start program at Flathead Valley Community College, aims to provide high schoolers with an employable skill set upon graduation.

“It’s kind of surreal that it’s finally happening,” said Ben Schaeffer, the welding and fabrication instructor for the high school’s industrial arts department. “There’s definitely a big group of people that have worked extremely hard over the last eight years to make this a reality.” The first of its kind to be offered by the college within the state, the program allows students to complete an accredited Welding Technology Certificate of Technical Studies from FVCC without ever leaving “the bricks and mortar of Columbia Falls High School,” as Schaeffer put it.

The new in-house program came to fruition through the combination of a committed coalition of high school faculty and administration, an evolving Running Start program, the college’s emphasis on workforce development, and an unprecedented arrangement with college staff.

Schaeffer, who graduated with an industrial technology education degree from MSU Northern, has long been enthusiastic about rebuilding what has become a diminishing skilled labor force in the trades.

“We have a problem with our skilled labor force going away, so we need to bridge that gap in developing skillbased tradesmen,” said Schaeffer.

When Schaeffer took over Columbia Falls’ industrial arts welding and fabrication position full-time in 2013, he began pushing to do just that at the high school level.

At the time, the high school metals shop class already had an avenue, developed by Schaeffer’s predecessor Mark Beckwith, for students to take two different exams to obtain American Welding Society welding certificates. Schaeffer, wanting to build upon that, then began reaching out to FVCC’s Running Start program director Beth Romain and the high school administration to see if students could obtain the more well-rounded Welding Technology CTS from FVCC that, as the course description states, “provides students the minimum welding skills needed to be employable.”

In part, the program was made possible due to Running Start’s newest phase of development. Created in the early ‘90s, Running Start provides the opportunity for high schoolers to get an affordable jump on their college education by letting them earn college credits that also apply to their high school diploma. Originally those dual credits were earned by taking courses directly at the college, but within the last decade, in an effort to expand the opportunity to students throughout the state, the college has worked to offer those same courses at the students’ own schools by having high school faculty teach them.

Schaeffer, along with Diane Marsh, one of the high school’s business and technology teachers, partnered up to teach most of the courses required for the Welding Technology CTS program, with Schaeffer teaching all of the necessary welding classes and Marsh teaching workforce preparation through a business communications class and a technical writing course.

While already qualified to teach those vocational courses, both teachers have gone “above and beyond” said Romain, to prepare their welding students for the workforce with a first-rate education. Marsh went back to school to take several graduate-level communications courses, while Schaeffer continues to take a non-mandatory two-week professional development course every summer. To cover the remaining CTS requirements, the high school created a novel arrangement with FVCC advanced manufacturing professor Dan Leatzow, who travels to the high school every day to teach a blueprint reading class as well as a Solidworks computer-aided design class.

The collaborative program is directly aligned with FVCC’s goal of serving as a workforce development resource for the valley’s business community.

“Being a community college, one of our greatest goals has always been to get local students hired into local positions to fill that community workforce need,” said Romain. “We have an advisory committee for every single Career and Technical program we have, made up of local folks out in the industry to keep our curriculum up to date,” said Romain. “It’s very important to us at FVCC to make sure that our programs are teaching students the skills that industry is looking for.”

Schaeffer is a member of the college’s Trades and Industrial Arts advisory committee, where he has gotten input that has not only informed the high school’s welding curriculum, but has helped transform the school’s metals classroom into a cutting- edge fabrication shop with 17 welding bays hosting a variety of industry standard multi-purpose and specialized welders.

Schaeffer largely credits the school’s administration and the support they have given in allocating funds to the program.

“Scott Gaiser and John Thompson truly bought into what we were doing, making this possible,” said Schaeffer.

All in all, students who complete the Columbia Falls Welding Technology CTS program take around 12 courses to graduate with two AWS certifications, an accredited CTS and six additional college credits that can be applied to the college’s Welding and Inspection Technology associate’s degree.

One of the program’s nine graduates, Cole Karlin, is already planning on finishing his associates at FVCC this fall, a fact made even more remarkable given that he once assumed he wouldn’t graduate high school, let alone get a degree.

“If I wouldn’t have gone through this process I probably wouldn’t have graduated,” said Karlin. “I probably would have dropped out by now. Welding just helped me go to school every day. … It’s just something I love to do. Like every day, I could do this, for the rest of my life pretty much.”

Karlin along with fellow graduate Sam Devitt have already received several job offers from companies around the country, earning anywhere from $15 to $35 per hour, directly out of high school.

Karlin also participated in the program’s first paid internship this year with Columbia Falls-based metal manufacturing shop Acutech Metalworks, a training opportunity that Schaeffer hopes to cultivate with additional businesses as the program expands.

Gracie Mee, the program’s sole female graduate, plans to take a gap year after high school working construction but hopes to use her CTS in the future.

“I’d like to get a welding job at some point. I don’t know when that’ll be, but I’d like to pursue this as a career for sure,” said Mee.

The program’s nine graduates walked at the FVCC commencement ceremony at Legend’s Stadium last week and will walk again with the rest of Columbia Falls’ class of 2021 at the school’s graduation ceremony at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 5.