A FUTURE IN WELDING ENGINEERING?

We have added several new learning partners at Metro in recent months. Edison Welding Institute (EWI) is one of them. It currently has two Metro interns working in its R&D laboratory high bay area. The students are creating technical signs to identify and explain equipment in the lab for the more than 4,000 visitors each year that tour the facility. The signs will have high impact and will be informative to both technical and non-technical customers. This internship is exposing our students to a variety of engineering and welding research technologies.

We have recently begun to negotiate with EWI and Ohio State to partner with Metro to provide classroom space in the building that they share. OSU houses its College of Welding Engineering at one end of the facility. One proposed idea is to have the university offer a college-level introductory engineering course in the building that would be open to our students who are eligible for college credit courses. This has the potential for a win-win situation for all of us involved; we get our students in college engineering courses during high school, the College of Welding Engineering gets an audience of potential future students that they can try to influence toward careers in welding engineering and EWI has access to the pipeline of students to hire as interns, co-ops and eventually employees.

On Feb. 13, the College of Welding Engineering held an open house to showcase their program and create interest in the field. Dr. Bruening took his third period “Principles of Engineering” high school class to the open house and I tagged along. Our students were told about the high employment rate of welding engineers and given information about starting salaries, the wide variety of applications for the skills and the ease of finding highly paid internships to help with college expenses. We were told that many scholarships go unused due to the lack of students pursuing welding engineering degrees.

We toured of the facility and current welding engineering students explained their senior projects and demonstrated equipment in the labs. Our students were given a lot to think about and on the drive home, they said it was a very interesting tour. One girl even said, “I think I want to do that!”

We just keep trying to expose them to every opportunity we can to help them see how wide open the world can be for them if they have a  strong work ethic in school.