Strengthening Welding Education through Institutional Involvement

The College of the Sequoias (COS) welding program (https://www.cos.edu/en-us/academics/industry-technology/welding) is in California’s Central Valley. This region is home to the nation’s most productive farmland, which produces 40% of U.S. table foods, in addition to being the largest dairy-producing region in the country (ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-central-valley.html and esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/h989r321c/ww72d629z/cz30rp422/mkpr0125.pdf). Brands such as Kraft, Del Monte, Sun-Maid, Edy’s/Dreyer’s, and E. & J. Gallo Winery have built extensive factories that require welders and pipefitters.

Like many community colleges around the nation, COS is tasked with equipping the next generation of our region’s welders with the skills they will need in a rapidly evolving industry. While the steps involved in maintaining a welding curriculum vary widely, even more so between public and private training facilities, I believe core principles can benefit many programs. My desire is to encourage fellow welding instructors to take bold steps to improve their programs and leverage institutional engagement to promote the trades in their own regions. 

Staying Disciplined 

While academic courses and programs at many of our institutions are required to be updated every five years, our program must be updated on a two-year cycle to ensure relevancy with emerging trends (https://www.ccccurriculum.net/career-technical-education/). Some may think that two years is plenty of time to update course prerequisites or degree programs effectively, and normally I would agree; however, in our district, any change to curriculum whether it's the removal or addition of a single course topic, learning objective, or a larger task like adding or deleting a class or degree program, must go through more than a dozen layers of governance. 

The path to approval can sometimes take up to a full academic year to get updates into the catalog. Often, this is completed just in time to begin planning the next round of required updates. We must regularly review our welding programs; doing so thoughtfully, with the input of a well-functioning advisory committee, helps ensure ongoing industry relevance, which offers our students the very best shot at success. Unfortunately, the system intended to keep our programs up to date with an ever-evolving industry can have a chilling effect on faculty, making meaningful changes to their programs. It’s this reality that has led many welding programs, including the COS program, to keep doing what they've always done rather than risk making substantial changes. 

A thorough review of our program revealed several critical issues. Many of the course outlines were filled with confusing language and obscure objectives that may have been intended to impress curriculum reviewers from academic disciplines into moving required updates. Additionally, some course titles and catalog descriptions were misleading. Other courses were no longer industry-relevant. Pathways to completion and degree options were convoluted with no clear starting or ending point. A lack of prerequisites meant new students with zero welding experience could enroll in a stainless steel or aluminum gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) course (where they often dropped out). Once aware of these issues, a decision must be made: Do we maintain the status quo or lean into the process and learn to navigate the system effectively to make the needed changes?

A Seat at the Table 

“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” These words, said to me by a former COS Welding Department chair shortly before he retired in 2019, were initially encouraging me to leverage institutional involvement to advocate for program budgets. Over the years, they have motivated me to get involved in our college beyond the welding shop. 

The advice I was given then, and the advice I would respectfully offer now, is “Take a seat at the table!” The proverbial table is where institutional decisions are made at the root level of our districts. It’s within various groups and subgroups of governance structures that guide our campuses nationwide. And it’s where you can learn to pull the levers of these systems from within effectively. This approach has led me to serve on our curriculum committee, academic senate, task forces, hiring committees, and the faculty union board. When the opportunity arose this past fall to begin making meaningful updates to our welding program, it was the insider knowledge gained from these experiences, along with the relationships built across disciplines and at various levels of the institution, that helped guide and facilitate major changes in our program within a relatively short period.

Making Course-Level Updates 

Based on extensive advisory committee input and a desire to improve student success and job readiness, I began with course-level updates. This was followed by the removal of our oxyfuel welding course, effective in fall 2026. This is a big change considering the rather large footprint our oxyfuel stations currently occupy. As we look forward to remodeling, we have the potential to double our capacity for welding stations. There will be a new fundamental of welding course, serving as the foundational starting point for students; this prerequisite will introduce students to the core principles of typical arc welding processes, as well as units in construction math, vocabulary, and basic metallurgy. Additionally, I introduced a new industrial piping course to meet our area’s need for competent pipe welders and pipefitters to maintain the countless food plants that span our valley. On the heels of these course updates, I introduced changes to our degree programs, adding some prerequisites and introducing the new Certificate of Achievement in Industrial Piping. 

Ending Thoughts 

I’m closing by encouraging fellow welding educators to reject the status quo, take the time to learn how to effectively navigate your institution’s curriculum procedures, and get involved beyond the welding laboratory. I believe there is a huge benefit to professors in the trades being present at all levels of shared governance within our institutions. Beyond the relationships gained and practical red-tape-cutting experience, there is a common-sense approach to institutional matters that is sorely needed in academia. Who better than tradespeople to provide that perspective? 

Photo 6: Welding Instructors Matt McGill (left) and Chris Huff pictured in COS’s welding laboratory. 

This article was written by Chris Huff (an AWS CWI and CWE, and welding instructor, career technical education, College of the Sequoias, Tulare College Center, Tulare, Calif.) for the American Welding Society.