HUNTINGTON – After four years in Gateway Regional High School’s Introduction to Welding and Manufacturing program, students are ready to enter the workforce as welders.

Paul Atkinson is in his 14th year of teaching welding – the first four in Easthampton and the last 10 at Gateway. Prior to teaching, he worked at various shops for 27 years, and now owns his own business, CCF Precision Welding, which does machine welding, wrought iron work, and spiral staircases. He said he knows what employers are looking for, and he maintains a business environment in the shop while teaching students the trade.

“We’re just as important as doctors,” Atkinson said. “When someone says ‘I’m a welder,’ if you’re just tack-welding an exhaust system together, you may do that OK. It’s the structural stuff; having two pieces of metal, welding it together and making it stronger than it was before. That, to me, is a professional welder,” he said.

In Atkinson’s class, students get right into the business in their freshman year, learning shielded metal arc welding, and then oxy-acetylene welding equipment and cutting, as part of a vocational program regulated under Chapter 74 of state law.

“We also work on welding symbols the first year; what they’re all about,” he said.

In their sophomore year, students learn MIG welding, or gas-metal arc welding. “We continue to use shop equipment like drills, shears, and hand tools, and introduce them to the CNC [computer numerical control] plasma cutter, where they can make their own designs and build things on the computer and in 3D models,” Atkinson said.

In their junior year, students learn how to use the TIG gas tungsten arc welder, as well as continuing to use all the other processes “to keep the cobwebs away.”

“They work on fabrication skills junior year; measuring layout, pricing steel, and quoting hypothetical jobs. I have some blueprints that I share with them,” Atkinson said.

Students also work on their resumés. “As juniors, their resumé starts to get a little larger. We condense it down so it’s not such a big read.”

Atkinson said he ordinarily starts to reach out to employers at the end of junior year, though the program hasn’t had co-op work-study opportunities the past two years due to COVID-19. Because Gateway is an academic school that has vocational programs, the students try to rearrange their classes to be done by 10 a.m.

“Senior year, I let them come in and start thinking on their own and problem-solve. They have to have a senior project finished by senior year, which has to combine everything they’ve learned,” Atkinson said. He has the students do individual projects, which makes it easier to place them in a job at their ability level.

As seniors, Atkinson also helps them to get jobs. During the last week of school, they travel around to companies. He said every senior last year except one, who didn’t have his driver’s license, was placed.

Certified welders must have a 500-hour certificate of completion.

“I get them to the point where they can be certified when they leave here. But every company has its own idea of what they want for certification. When I get to know them in their junior and senior years, I can point them towards which certification,” Atkinson said, adding that most certification comes from the company itself.

“There is so much work for welding and fabrication right now,” he said. “It won’t be an issue for the next five to 10 years.”

He said some students enter the program to be able to work with their families in farming or heavy equipment: “They learn what they have to learn to work,” he said.

Atkinson said the shop gets help with blueprints and welding wire supplies from Advance Manufacturing in Westfield and steel supplies from Sullivan Metals, some donated, some purchased at a discount.

“They are very willing to give us materials to get to American Welding Society standards,” he said.

Airgas East, based in West Springfield, has lowered the price of argon gas for the school, and just dropped off a skid of material, including weld wire, gloves and safety equipment. The company also entered the school shop in a drawing for a new welding machine.

“Between the skid and the $10,000 machine, that’s $14,000 just donated to us from Airgas. I have one student that is going there,” he said.

Recently, Superintendent Kristen Smidy said she plans to market the Chapter 74 programs at Gateway as one way to keep students in the district. Atkinson said the program at Gateway is underfunded.

“The funding that we receive is used for machinery, but not for consumables. Now, I have to make phone calls and ask. I have a good group that sends me materials, but I spend $1,000 a year out of my own pocket,” he said, adding if the school is going to market the program, that’s part of it.

He agreed that a lot of kids transfer out of Gateway to go to vocational schools. Out of the 24 students currently in the welding program, 10 are freshmen, and he hopes not to lose any next year to another school. He said he used to teach an eighth grade welding class, which helped to get students to stay in the district and sign up for his program. However, being alone with no shop assistant, he found the younger students reduced the class time for kids getting certificates.

Atkinson said he tries to offer his students as much as possible in the industrial arts to attract them to the program, and to let them pursue their own interests. He tells them: “with hard work and dedication to be the best, they can enjoy a professional life to support themselves and a family if they choose to.”

Atkinson said in his 14 years of teaching, he has probably placed 120 students in the welding profession. He said he’s still contacted by students from his first years of teaching in Easthampton.

This story has been edited (Feb. 6, 2022) to correct the name of CCF Welding.