(WACO, Texas) – Texas State Technical College’s Workforce Training office wants to bring welding to you.

The office recently finished creating a mobile welding training lab inside a 42-foot enclosed gooseneck trailer. The training lab features four welding bays, one being wheelchair accessible, along with multipurpose welding machines, a fume extraction system and a hydraulic wheelchair ramp.

“I think it’s a great opportunity,” said Courtney Cox, a TSTC Workforce Training project manager. “It adds a new tool in our toolbox.”

Workforce Training staff expect the mobile lab to be taken to high schools, trade shows and companies making requests for on-site certifications. The welding certifications that can be done in the mobile lab range from 1F, a flat weld done using a fillet joint, to 6G, which is an all-position pipe welding plus all-position structural welding.

“Being a certified welder opens doors for you,” said Jon Autenrieth, a TSTC Workforce Training instructor.

Autenrieth said staff are working to get the mobile trailer certified by the American Welding Society to be a mobile test facility. He said staff also want to get workforce training certification from the Texas Veterans Commission.

Jay Hernandez, executive director of TSTC’s Workforce Training office, said the mobile lab idea came about in discussions with staff from the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service regarding the availability of welding training opportunities.

For more information about Workforce Training at Texas State Technical College, call 254-867-4844 or go to tstc.edu/workforce.

(WACO, Texas) –  Texas State Technical College’s Diesel Equipment Technology program hosted on Thursday the Texas FFA Association Tractor Technician Career Development Event, which featured 12 high schools from North and Central Texas.

In the Texas FFA Association’s Area 5, Sam Rayburn High School placed first, Wolfe City High School placed second and Campbell High School placed third.

Dru Nichols, a sophomore member of Sam Rayburn High School’s team, said the key to victory was lots of hands-on practice. 

In the Texas FFA Association’s Area 8, Midway High School placed first, Crawford High School placed second and Teague High School placed third.

“It feels rewarding,” said Caleb Montgomery, a sophomore member of Midway High School’s team. “We have all been working on this since September.”

Students on the first-place teams in both areas received TSTC scholarships.

The top three teams from each area will compete in a state FFA tractor technician competition to be held in March at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Teams of three students took a written test and did a parts identification test. The students performed a troubleshooting exercise on John Deere and Kubota tractors donated for the competition by United Ag & Turf and Tipton International, both in Waco. Students drove the tractors once the teams found and repaired the problems.

TSTC’s Diesel Equipment Technology program instructors and students served as contest judges and  created the problems the high school students found in the tractors.

For more information on the Texas FFA Association, go to texasffa.org.

For more information on TSTC, go to tstc.edu. 

(WACO, Texas) – Starting in March, Texas State Technical College will become the first college in Texas to host the Tesla START training program. 

Tesla START is an accelerated 12-week training program designed to equip students with the skills necessary to become electric vehicle technicians. Following completion of the program, Tesla will work with successful students for placement in a Tesla Service Center in North America. 

Rudy Cervantez, TSTC’s statewide department chair for Automotive Technology, said the advanced training program will teach students to work on Tesla’s electric vehicles. He said graduates of TSTC’s automotive technology, aviation maintenance and electrical programs could be a good fit for the work.

Cervantez said the program is open to everyone in the community to apply, and students will be hired by Tesla. The training program will be housed in Waco at TSTC’s Kultgen Automotive Center. Tesla will provide the instructor, training equipment, vehicles, tools and curriculum for the program. 

Cervantez said each Tesla START class is about a dozen students, and will have three 12-week sessions this year. Students will develop technical expertise and earn certifications through a blended approach of in-class theory, hands-on labs and self-paced learning. Students are employed by Tesla as hourly interns.

Kelly Filgo, TSTC’s executive director of special projects, said working with Tesla is a great example of TSTC’s state-directed mandate to emphasize “highly specialized advanced and emerging technical and vocational areas for certificates or associate degrees.”

“Tesla recognizes we are a good pool to pull talent from,” Filgo said.

“For more than fifty years, TSTC has worked hand in glove with Texas employers to fulfill their needs for a skilled workforce,” said Mike Reeser, Chancellor & CEO of TSTC. “This partnership with Tesla is another example of the innovative manner in which we place Texans in great paying jobs.”

There are currently six other Tesla START partnerships with colleges in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and Washington. The program launched in 2018 and has had a total of more than 300 graduates to date. 

For more information on Tesla START, go to tesla.com/careers/tesla-start.

For more information on Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu.

(WACO, Texas) – Two instructors in Texas State Technical College’s Culinary Arts program enter 2020 preparing for international competitions.

Chef Michele Brown is a member of the Agricultural Culinary Team Manitoba taking part in the IKA/Culinary Olympics in February in Stuttgart, Germany. Brown will handle the team’s pastry arts.

Brown said she is at the point in her preparation to test how to style four different kinds of petit fours on plates. She will also spend time working on the detailed aspects of her desserts, including cocoa painting.

“It is about what makes more sense,” Brown said.

Once in Germany, the team will do final preparations at a kitchen they have arranged to use. 

“It is stress from the 13th of February to the 17th of February, then relax,” Brown said.

Chef Mark Schneider will compete at the Food & Hotel Asia (FHA) Food and Beverage 2020 in early April in Singapore. Schneider was selected to take part because of his membership in the Epicurean World Master Chefs Society.

Schneider started a stringent training schedule last week, with a combination of preparing ingredients and kitchen equipment along with cooking. He plans to use his competition dish twice for upcoming special events and most likely make minor changes up to the contest.

Schneider has also been doing research on Singapore’s cuisine. He will create a seafood dish for the competition, using local fish and some ingredients that are seasonally available.

“It’s a jump from doing anything in the U.S. or Europe,” he said.

For more information on Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu. 

(WACO, Texas) – Texas State Technical College’s Challenger Learning Center in Waco is preparing to take you to Mars starting this spring.

The center will offer the new “Expedition Mars” mission, said Jeremy Hagman, the Challenger Learning Center’s coordinator. Groups can make reservations now for the mission, which will enable participants to learn five phases of living on Mars.

“The concept is the same,” said Nereida Balli, director of Pre-College Programs, which include the Challenger Learning Center. “There is mathematics and science involved, and STEM information and activities the students are needing to get.”

Pre-K to fourth-grade students can take part in “Pre-Supply,” the revamped Atomnaut Academy that is accepting bookings now, Hagman said. An Atomnaut Academy can accommodate up to 28 students alternating between five stations.

“The kids help pack up and plan the mission,” he said. “They adopt an astronaut of their own and prepare the mission. This is more mission-focused.”

Balli said the Atomnaut Academy will prepare students to see what they can expect in doing missions once they reach fifth grade.

The Challenger Learning Center will continue to offer the “Rendezvous With a Comet” mission for students.

The Challenger Learning Center served more than 300 students in the fall in Waco, Hagman said. More than 1,000 students visited the center in 2019.

“We are getting a lot of new business from the local schools,” he said. “It is about community-building. We are here to support their students.”

The Challenger Learning Center is the third of its kind in Texas and is affiliated with the not-for-profit Challenger Center for Space Science Education in Washington, D.C. TSTC’s Harlingen campus is also home to a Challenger Learning Center.

The center’s purpose is to bring the planets to life for students. Visitors attend a short mission briefing and then divide into groups to work in Mission Control and a working laboratory. Activities are focused on communication, critical thinking, leadership and science.

The Challenger Learning Center honors the astronauts who died Jan. 28, 1986, when a booster engine failed on the Challenger space shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The initiative was founded that year by the families of the seven astronauts tragically killed.

For more information on Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu. 

(WACO, Texas) – Alicia Hayes was not going to miss this night.

Hayes, a middle school English teacher in the Wortham Independent School District, once taught students in Teague. One of those students, Gerardo Calixtro, was in her fifth-grade mathematics and sixth-grade science classes in Teague.

Now, Calixtro can call himself a graduate of Texas State Technical College.

Hayes saw Calixtro, and four other students she taught in Teague, walk across the stage at TSTC’s Fall 2019 Commencement earlier this month in Waco. Calixtro received an Electrical Lineworker Technology certificate.

“You can tell it meant something to him,” Hayes said.

Calixtro and Hayes reconnected through social media earlier this year and swapped telephone numbers. Calixtro invited Hayes to the ceremony and found out the day before she was able to attend. He asked one of his brothers to save Hayes and her daughter seating tickets.

“Knowing she pushed me throughout the school years I was with her, it felt good knowing and seeing her there,” Calixtro said. “She played a big role in me and my brothers’ lives, asking us what we were doing after high school.”

The day after the Commencement ceremony, Haynes attended the family’s celebratory barbecue for Calixtro in Teague.

“To see the support he had with his family and how proud they were, it touches your heart because you know that kid is going to succeed,” she said.

Calixtro’s graduation means even more to him because he said at one point while in high school, he wanted to drop out. At that stage in his life, college was not an option he was excited about.

But, Calixtro graduated in 2017 from Teague High School. He told his brothers he was going to college, but they did not believe him.

“I knew I would do it,” he said.

Calixtro had his own challenges while at TSTC.

“There were times I wanted to quit college because of financial stuff and work,” he said. “I didn’t think I would be able to do it.”

Calixtro’s brothers, David and Carmelo, are also students at TSTC. Hayes said she plans to watch them graduate from TSTC.

“I want my students to understand I consider them my children from the moment I start teaching them,” Hayes said. “It doesn’t stop just because they move to the next grade level or graduate.”

For more information about Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu.