pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou pou Dr. Ossal Lived with another episode, The Way to College podcast. And when I set out to create the podcast, it was to share stories from professionals, the folks that are in the trenches, working with students, but also folks, just professionals, talking about their educational journey, their professional journey. Lately, I've had a lot of guests talking about the work that they're doing to create pathways and opportunities for other students. And so today I have a gentleman who's very involved. It leads a welding program, and he's gonna get an opportunity to talk about that. But as always, I'd like to start with their story. And before we get there, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask him to introduce himself. So Mr. Love, would you mind introducing yourself to our audience out there? Yeah, my name is James Love. I am currently 38 years old. I got into the welding industry when I was about 19. I graduated from the local community that I serve now. So I am a Galveston graduate, Galveston Ball High graduate. And now I oversee the welding program for Galveston College. That's awesome. James, thank you for joining me today. And James, I ask all my guests the same question. If you had to identify a starting point for your own educational journey, James, where would that starting point be? So the starting point for me was when I was in my BCIS program in high school, and they hit us with that critical question, where do you see yourself in five years? And so I came up with a plan. My plan was to enter into the pharmacy field, the medical field. And I started my pharmacy technician program here at Galveston College. And then I got through the first two semesters and I got to the clinical semester. And when I applied to do my clinicals, the state board came back and said, I was denied because I had a previous charge on my criminal history when I was a senior in high school. So I did make a mistake when I was a senior. And I did listen to my instructors when they told me, hey, you need to watch yourself when you're close to 17, 18, that anything that you do will follow you. And it did follow me. And it followed me into my career pathway to where it kept me from achieving my overall dreams of being a pharmacist. Well, I had an uncle who was in the trades. He was a boiler maker. And when I got that denial, I basically was like, almost gave up, almost. It's like, man, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I've already put in a year and a half into college and I really didn't get anything out of it. And so he was like, hey, you go to work, go to school, go to the military. And I was not going to the military. I was already done with school because of the denial. And then I was like, let me go to work. So I ended up shadowing him as an apprentice with the Boilermakers Union. And I got to travel up in the Northern States, got to get some hands on. I learned the trades the hard way. I actually learned the hands on way where there was no book work. It was like, hey, we're gonna show you what to do. This is what we expect of you. I did a lot of my rigging out in the field, learning about rigging and weights and slings and all the good stuff that goes with lifting material up tonnage. But I also got to pick up on some welding skills. And so when I was able to touch the welding portion of that trade, that is where I fell in love with fabrication and welding, being able to design or create objects out of nothing and put them together and create these beautiful welds, so to speak. And so with that pathway for the Boilermakers and the trades, I wanted more for myself. And so I left the Boilermakers Union after about two and a half years, I came back to Texas and I started working in the local shipyards down here in Galveston, Texas. Well, if you don't know shipyard work, shipyard work is very hard, very strenuous. I mean, it's hard on the body and the mental. And so I wasn't prepared, but it was an eye opener to like, hey, do I really wanna be here all my life and being a welder, being in the trenches, so to speak. And I still loved it. I started traveling to the other shipyards, the naval shipyards with my brother, he was in the Navy. Went to Virginia, went to Mississippi, worked those shipyards down in those areas. When I came back to Texas again, I seen that Galveston College had a welding program. And my dream was, man, I wanna be a pipe, but I wanna learn the pipe aspect. I wanna make the bigger books, the bigger money. And so I earned my associate's degree from Galveston College, taking the welding program. The welding program wasn't as hard as I thought because I already had some hands-on skills training. And so when I was done, my instructor at the time, he was like, hey, I need you to go join the Pipefitters Local 211. It's a union out of Houston. They employ welders, they employ pipefitters, but it's all pipe. And so I did, I put my application in and that day that I took my entry exam. So with the union, you have to pass a background, show your graduation certificate from the high school, show that you're a legal citizen in the United States. And when I did all that, they give you a math test. It's like an aptitude test. And so I passed the math test. You gotta pass with an 80% or higher. So I passed the math test. And then by the time I left that hall, that local union hall, I already had two messages from the business agent. But I had my cell phone off because they were like, no cell phones, turn them off, put them in the lock box, et cetera. And so I hadn't even turned my cell phone back on. And when I did, I had two messages and he was like, hey, if you don't call me back, I'm gonna jump to the next candidate. And I called him back and I never forget his name was Michael Trayhan. And he was like, hey, I got a wrecking at one of the local shops in Lamarck called Farmer's Copper. And that's a pipe shop. They work with all exotic stainless, silicon bronze, naval brass. I mean, you think of any type of metal out there, they worked on it. And so I was like, yeah, I'm all for it. So I wrecked in. And when I wrecked into that job, it was like, oh, you're an apprentice. Oh, you went to trade school. Oh, you don't know what you're doing. You didn't learn the union way. So I got a lot of feedback from the older folk that were in there. And I basically had to show them what I was worth. And man, once I showed them what I was capable of, I had the stewards who was like the lead person in the shop for the union. He was like, man, I'm going to get you a test. You should be making journeyman's skill. There's no way we're going to pay you apprenticeship skill. So they sent me to the hall to get my tickets, my UA certs. I passed three UA certs. I came back to that same job site with my paperwork. And they started paying me journeyman's skills. So I was freshly in the trades for pipe, making 30 plus an hour starting on. Yeah. James, you go here, you go. And I'm sure you're thankful to your uncle to be able to, like when you hit that roadblock, right? Yeah. You go when you start working with him. And you mentioned you're learning a bunch of different things on the job, getting hands-on experience. What was it exactly about welding that you took to? I love the talents. I love how those welders, when they got there in the morning, they were the cleanest. But by the end of the day, they were still clean. You know? And so I was like, well, how do I get like that? Because when I left work, I was drenched in sweat, muddy, dirty, grinding dust, just rust scale, everything all over me in my hair, on my neck, everywhere. And so I was like, how do I get like that? And I started watching the elder, the older folk that were there, you know? Because primarily in our trade, you have huge age gaps. You have the older folks who are the seasoned welders, and then you end up the young grunts, like the laborers doing all the labor work, the younger cats. And so I was one of the cats that was like, hey, what are y'all doing? How do y'all achieve that? Well, how do y'all fit it? How do y'all prep it? What does it involve? What's the amperage? What process is that called? I started asking questions. And at one point, one of the elder genome was like, man, grab a hood. Let me show you. And so I started watching them and picking up on what they were doing. And then eventually he was like, here, try it. I don't know some scrap pieces. He's like, here, try it. And when I touched that kick torch and that filler metal, it was just like, man, this is beautiful. I like this. And it just the attention to detail, the focus, the, like I said, being clean after work, depending on what type of welding you were doing, kid welding, being the cleanest, but there's other forms of welding that you will get dirty. But that was the main aspect that I fell in love with. It's just like the criticalness behind it, but also like the end product. It's like, man, I did that with my hands. And just to sit back and see it and be like, man, I was a part of that. And the structures that we built are still standing till this day. That's awesome. That's awesome, man. I can just imagine the pride you must take, right? Especially at that moment when you get to build something. So you've taken us through and what your exposure to the welding, your education, but today you find yourself and you're an educator. You're teaching others to do this work. Tell us about how you found yourself found this position with the college. So I was there with the union. We were down here in Galveston, building the Jeanne Sealy Hospital for UTMB. And I was on the pipe crew. I did everything from soldering pipe to welding carbon steel pipe, sewer lines, chill water lines for the eggs back systems. I did a lot of work at the new hospital. And so I was still in contact with the new program director because my old instructor was transitioning out and he was transitioning in and we made contact. My instructor was like, hey, this is one of our best students. If you ever need anything or if he ever needs some train or some refreshers, hey, this is who he is. And so I stayed in contact with that current director at that time. And one day I was at the job site in Galveston and I got a call like, hey, my night instructor just left. I'm in a bind. I need an instructor. And you know your stuff, would you mind coming in? So what I did, I shadowed him for like a week. And I was like, man, I like this. Like I like talking to the students. I like giving my constructive criticism to the students like, hey, this is okay, but this is what we want. And this is why we want it this way. You know, explaining the why and the how and the how too. And so when I started doing that, I started as a part-time instructor at night for the college while maintaining my full-time position with the union. Well, I want to say about two years went by, I finally turned in my book with the union. I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna fall back on the instruction full-time. Well, I waited for a full-time position for about a year. And then when that director had left, they brought another director in to run the program and he didn't work out. And so the position for the program director opened up around 2017, 2018. And I applied for it. And when I applied for it, I got, I had my qualifications, my degree, I had my stackable credentials, like all my ASME qualifications, my AWS D-1-1s. I had those under my belt. So when I presented my thesis on teaching and my application, I basically was handed the keys to the kingdom. And so I started my transition into program director around that time. And then my biggest hurdle with that program director was COVID. And so being new to the trade or new to the education scene, it was like we were used to books, you know, paper, handouts, you know, talking to the lecture series type style teaching, going into the labs, hands-on. But when COVID hit, I had to rejuvenate the program to where now we're a digital platform as far as the e-books, the homeworks, the written exams and that nature. But I was still big on, hey, you cannot learn well than sitting that behind the computer screen. The students need to be in this lab. And I advocated for us during COVID to reopen and I had to create a plan to where it was like, we have 24 booths, I have 24 students, we're gonna have class A and class B, 12 students have come in, a student with a booth in between every student, you know, kind of trying to separate, keep that distance, you know, that seven foot, whatever the criteria was at the time, like just trying to maintain it, but also be like, hey, these students need to learn, these students are dependent on us to be able to leave us to go to work because during COVID, welders were still working. People still needed gasoline, people still needed hair products, people still needed food, people still needed drinking water. And that's the other beauty about this trade that I love. It's like informing those that are unaware everything that we use comes from some source or some type of welding, whether it's welded pipe, whether it's a ship to bring the materials and to America or ship them out. Like there's just so much that is involved with welding that typical America wouldn't be what it is today without it. Yeah, well, you know, this is, I love your story, James. And I, and could, I don't know, I don't, at any point, did you ever see yourself, you know, you're taking, well, particularly while you're a student, while you were a student, could you ever see yourself leading teaching a class? No, when I was a student, my mind was on making money. I was like, what can I do to make the most money possible? And being part of that union, I used to, I tell students this all the time, my first big critical job was working at the nuclear power facility down in South Texas. And when I say my fitters, I had two fitters with me and myself, and fitters and welders make pretty much the same dollar. Now, one gets paid to use their brain, which is all the math calculations and all that. And then the other one, like me, I get paid for my arm only, for they say my shoulder down because of the welding skill. And so we went, our first check on a turnaround or an audit, your first check is always a paper check. And when we walked into Walmart to cash our checks, we basically killed the cash place with all the money because of three checks. We took all their money out of their tin. And so they had to tell everybody, hey, we're out of money, y'all gonna have to come back tomorrow. And it was just like, what? And so the type of money that we were making on travel work as a welder is just like, man, it's a dream come true. I tell students all the time, like, man, I used to make income tax checks every week. People were waiting on $6,000 returns. I'm like, man, I'm gonna work for 72 hours and make that. Like you're working though, you're working 17 and 712s. I mean, it's just, like I said, you gotta have that niche for it. You just gotta put yourself and motivate yourself. What are your goals in life? And I knew my goals, cause I didn't have kids at the time, but my goals were to be established, to where my kids, when I had them, didn't have anything to worry about. Myself didn't have to worry about job to job or check to check to where I could live comfortably and do the things that I love. That's awesome. Now James, congratulations on that. But let's talk about your program now, cause now you're overseeing this program. And I know recently you had a signing, so how big is the program? So as of right now, our credit side, we see it about 32 students on the credit, which are our adult learners. So anybody that's 18 or older. And then on our dual credit side, we created a pathway with the local GISD, which is Gowston Independent School District. So we created a pathway and that district oversees five to six different high schools. And the biggest one being Ball High, we created a pathway to where students can enter into the welding trade their freshman year, but then their sophomore year, they enter into what we call the dual credit pathway, where now they can start earning college credentials or college credits towards their degree. And so with that dual credit pathway, when I first started that pathway, I wanna say we had about 10 to 12 students in that pathway. Now I oversee 120 students in that dual credit pathway. Yes. Wow. And they have a hundred incoming freshmen. So in total, 240 potential dual credit pathway students in that program. Wow. Wow, congratulations, man. How many instructors do you all have? So I have two full-time instructors. Myself included, and then I have three part timers. Okay. Yeah. And so typically like a welding class, like if I'm a student and I'm gonna go into one of these classrooms, how many peers am I wet? So at the high school, we limited, we limited because when I came in, they used to have doubled up students in the booth. And I'm like, nah, students aren't learning like that. They're in there with Lolli Gagging and horse playing and BS and so I was like, nah, we're gonna limit this. And so now it's 20 booths, 20 students per section. And so we have seven sections at the high school. So that's 140 kids potentially in there in one day. And then at the college side, we have 32 booths. So I take 32 students per section and I have three sections of dual credit here. And then I have my credit classes in the midday afternoon and to the nighttime. So you've got one, you've got these two programs. You got your dual credit, you've got your college credit, the dual credit. So a high school student that starts with your program as a freshman, by the time they graduate high school, what kind of credentials do they have? So they can earn two college certificates, meaning that they've taken eight college courses with us under the dual credit pathway. And so that means they'll be done with their second semester welding. And then when they graduate, they rolled into the summer session, which is the last semester, which is all pipe welded. And that's where a majority of them wanna get. And they're like, miss Lolli, why do you put the pipe semester at the end? I'm like, because not everybody is gonna make it as a pipe welder. And I'm honest and I'm truthful with them. I'm like, in order for you to be successful at pipe welding, you have to master the plate. You have to master the actual skill sets of knowing amperage, heat input, manipulation, shielding, gas process, consumables, I mean, et cetera. There's a science behind welding. It's not just putting your hood on, striking an arc and you can form the weld. There's muscle memory involved with the hands. There's muscle memory involved with the eyes. There's eye hand coordination when you use a two-handed process. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to welding that, like I tell students, LeBron James think it to be LeBron James by sitting on the bench, not shooting any jumpers. Jordan did not become the goat of the NBA or just sports in general by not practicing. You guys, you wanna be good? You have to practice. You have to make mistakes. How do we get better? We learn from our mistakes. And where's the best place to make the mistake in the lab under the instructor supervision? I love that. I love that, James. You know, I often, you know, remind students about just what you said, right? You've gotta put in the practice. You've gotta put in the work. And imagine the great thing about, for example, your program. You can make a mistake there. It's probably not gonna cost anybody's lives or anything versus doing it out, you know, at the shipyard or working on the pipes, whatever you're doing. You know, so congratulations, James. Sounds like a wonderful program and the strong established program that you've got there. So James, you know, you just, you know, you and I connected because somebody forwarded me some of the information about the program. And if I remember correctly, there was a signing recently. So tell me about that. What is it, what was that process? So NC3, the National Coalition of Certifications, it's a governing body that offers different credentials for different pathways, everything from H-Bag to electrical electronics to robotics to welding. And one of the partnerships that they have is through Lincoln Electric. Lincoln Electric being one of the biggest welding, consumable welding machinery providers in America or worldwide, I should say. And they offer the curriculum. Well, one thing that I loved about their curriculum is that you have to pass the written exam and you have to pass a proctored weld test under a NC3 certified instructor. And all the certificates that you've seen behind me that you're asking, all those were earned through Lincoln through NC3 where I went to school for, we learned the processes, learned the terminology, like learned all the book work for them. And then I did the hands-on application, which is the easy part for me because I'm a welder and that's what I love to do. It's the book work and like I said, the sciences behind the processes that, you know, I got to reinforce and re-educate myself on and pass that information to my students. So my students also get to earn these certifications as well. And so with that, the NC3 puts on this national signing day that kind of mimics the NCAA. It's where everybody gets recognized for signing for football to a college or basketball or baseball to a college. Well, it's like, why don't we recognize our students that are entering these trade pathways? They came up with the NC3 signing day and we had 120 students that signed up. I want to say only about 80 showed up because, you know, I wasn't there to pull them by the ear to get them there. But they, we had 80 students show up, but 120 total signed up to enter into the pathway. Now we recognized them. We had some of our vendors donate some equipment and some PPE, some protective gear. And we even had a small 165-inch welder machine donated through that same vendor from ESOP. And so we raffled them off and students were able to walk away with giveaways. But also we bring in industry partners. I had a supervisor there from Invent. The supervisor from Invent is actually a former student in the mine. And now he oversees two shops for that company. And he came in because, like you said, we're always harmed. And he said, your pathway to me is through Mr. Love and this program. And so that was a big, you know, big talking point for the students. And then we had Ms. Carla Thompson from Turner Industry. She used to be the educational services, kind of like reaching out to the schools, telling the schools like, hey, this is what's changing in industry. This is what we look for from your students when they start to apply to our company. And just to kind of reiterate what I was saying, that hey, y'all've chosen a pathway that's going to take hard work and dedication. But at the end, if you push yourself through it, you're going to see the outcomes. And you're going to be able to reap the benefits from the actual hands-on practical. And so she was there. And then we had the Lincoln rep there, giving some numbers on the projected growth of the industry and how, as America, we're still substantially low into filling that pipeline for the retirees. I think it's projected over 100,000 retirees in the next two years. And we're only projecting 40,000 welders a year maybe. That's maybe, you know? Yeah. Wow. That sounds, one, like a great opportunity, a great experience for all of these young people, either to be there and to go through this event, experience that, and to be recognized. Because I think a lot of times the trades aren't recognized. And those kids that choose to go down that path, are seldom recognized. So hats off to you for that opportunity. And that's the benefit about joining into the trade. Because we're so high demand, a lot of students don't really understand the cost of a four-year university, like a UT Austin or a Texas A&M, Kingsville. Like, unless you got $40,000 to $100,000 in your pocket, like, I don't know if you're going to be able to afford that tuition unless you're taking loans and putting yourself in debt before you ever earn a degree. Whereas the trades, you have the unions, you have the local community college, you have the trade schools. We're all high demand trades where it'll cost you almost nothing to attend these programs. Yeah. Wow. Mr. Love, before we jumped on, I talked about how, with a lot of these programs, successful ones, right? It's often, it's the people. It's the people behind it, the teachers and the directors. And you know, you clearly are passionate about welding. But even it sounds like you're even more passionate about this work. Why are you so passionate about this work? I used to be a student. I used to be that troublemaker kid that didn't really understand where he was headed in life. And when my senior year hit, I was still kind of lost. But then when I was taking that BCIS class, it kind of put everything into a focal point for me. And I remember being a student not knowing what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go. And so one thing that I love about this position is that I get to connect with the younger generation and kind of give my story and say, hey, we all have ups and downs. It's that determination and that will that you have burning inside of you that determines where you end up in life. If I were to lay down and say, oh, man, forget this. I don't want to do nothing because of the state board denying me. I wouldn't be in the position that I am today. But I was, you know, I was going home like, man, I'm going to get this done. I'm going to make something of myself. I want to make money. I want to be comfortable. I want to, you know, live a good lifestyle to where I never looked back and second guess my choices. And so again, I made mistakes. I learned from mistakes. We're all human. And I bring that aspect into my teaching style to where I was like, hey, I get life happens. But knowing how to communicate that with me, knowing how to communicate, hey, I need help. That's the biggest aspect of life that a lot of people forget that, hey, sometimes we need help. All you got to do is say something. And you never know who's around that may help you. And I always bring up stories that I have in the industry. And one of the stories that always sticks out to me is that when we had a co-worker and it was about 100 of us in that lunch room, we had a co-worker and he got a call that his wife passed away and he needed to go home. And so when he ended up having to go home, everybody from the helpers all the way to the foreman's, everybody pulled $100 out of their pocket and was like, hey, whatever you got to do to get on to put gas in your car, to whatever expenses you need to get on your cover, brother. And like that camaraderie sticks with me and I still feed my students like that, like, hey, y'all are responsible for your individual grades. But when we're in this class, we're looking out for everybody, whether it's safety, whether it's giving somebody a hand, moving material, whether it's helping your fellow classmate troubleshoot the machine. We're here to help everybody. And if you cannot be part of that brotherhood, sisterhood, hey, you're going to struggle a little bit in life, but hey, this is why you're here. You're here to learn, hey, we're all here for each other. And that's what I like to instill in my students. Sir Love, I couldn't think of a better way to end this interview. Thank you for the story. Thank you for the work that you're doing, not only for clearly the college, but more importantly for the students. You know, and you're touching them and their families. And, you know, like you shared with that story with your former student, right? You know, you're leading a legacy and you're creating paths for countless generations. So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate it. This concludes another episode of the Way to College Podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to all of our listeners and viewers out there. Please remember to subscribe, rate, share, and don't forget to share the podcast with one other person. We'd appreciate it. Thank you. And we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.
