When students arrive at the Concord Regional Technical Center in a few weeks, sparks will fly inside its newly installed welding shop.
The career and tech education center, or CRTC, added a welding course to its bouquet of offerings this year. It filled up fast.
“When we went out to recruit students, they would always ask if we had a welding program,” said CRTC Principal Anne Fowler. Now, they do.
CRTC is run by the Concord School District but takes in kids from 30 towns across the region, who apply for its two-year programs in a range of career paths, from emergency response and law enforcement to computer engineering, cosmetology and culinary arts.
Fowler decided to add welding after the school’s automotive program lost one of its two instructors and saw plateauing applications. Meanwhile, the construction program waitlist, which included some welding training, got longer every year. The welding program creates more opportunities at CRTC for students with interest in both of those fields.
There’s demand in the industry, too.
“We always ask the question: Are there any skills our students need to have when they show up at the job?” Fowler said of her conversations with trade professionals. “Welding kept coming up.”
From the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to mom-and-pop farms, the skill applies to industries across New Hampshire.
That’s how Joab Owen, who will teach 36 new welding students this year, got his start.
Owen was raised on his family farm in Hopkinton, where he still lives. After years of working on tractors and other equipment growing up, he became a student in the automotive program at the tech center now known as CRTC.
The early trade training he received is “a part of so many reasons of who I am,” Owen said. “It’s really full- circle for me.”
Owen began his career as an Army mechanic. When he left active duty, he studied agriculture mechanics at the University of New Hampshire, going on to teach in Connecticut. Now with 30 years in education under his belt, welding has always been part of his curriculum.
Owen taught on the Seacoast for a few years before joining John Stark in 2015. Two years later, he developed that school’s welding program.
His students have gone on to win and podium at statewide welding competitions in recent years.
For Fowler and her team, getting Concord’s program off the ground so quickly, in less than a year, was a coup.
There was the tumult of school budget talks in late winter. With grants and outside support backing the renovations, the new trade program captured the support of district leaders even in a year of cuts.
Then came time to convert what had been a section of the automotive garage. Industry partners, Fowler said, came in handy. SL Chasse, a welding company that works with career and tech centers across the state, volunteered to design the shop. In the months since, the renovation has meant installing new gas lines, exhaust hoods, work cubbies, window flash coatings, safety features and more. With less than a few weeks before the school year starts, that work is nearly complete.
Finding the right instructor could have posed a major challenge, especially on a condensed timeline. Getting Owen, Fowler said, was a score.
In January, Owen was touring CRTC with his son, who will attend in the fall, and noticed a table at the open house advertising the welding program. But there was no teacher.
“I always knew that CRTC was dabbling in welding,” he said. “And I’d always said, if there was ever a school I would leave to, it would be Concord.”
Not only did he have the expertise, but he had decades of experience in the classroom and knew what it meant to nurture a new career ed program.
“The stars were aligned,” Fowler said. “This process could not have gone more perfectly.”
Just having enough space for the welding program was also a big win for Fowler. The school has limited square-footage, tacked onto the back of Concord High School’s campus.
“We can’t really grow,” she said. “Staying in our existing footprint, but yet staying nimble and current with the job market, the employment market, where the trends are, it’s a challenge.”
