^ After a year of unemployment, Brandi Hilliard of Concord participated three days a week in the Back-to-Work program at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College to learn welding and pipefitting. She soon found herself a journeyman welder making $34 an hour.  (Photo courtesy NC Community College System.)

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Welding is a profitable, high-demand trade for students at many North Carolina community colleges.

Forsyth Tech in Winston-Salem, for example, offers welding classes from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m.  With classes full and local employers like Siemens and Deere Hitachi demanding more welders, Forsyth Tech is considering adding more classes.

After he visited all 58 community colleges in 2010, former NCCCS President Scott Ralls shared the following account from Tri-County Community College, which serves Cherokee, Clay and Graham counties in the far western reaches of the state.

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By Dr. Scott Ralls
Former President
NC Community College System

MURPHY – I saw the power of passion at Tri-County Community College when Gary Westmoreland, the welding instructor, announced he did not want to present a PowerPoint on the success of his welding students but rather he wanted to present some of their paychecks.

And that is what he literally did.  He presented us with copies of their recent paychecks.

Gary felt that they did the loudest and best talking for his program … and he was right.  With students working around the world and some bringing home six-figure incomes back to Tri-County’s communities, you couldn’t argue with his logic.

Driven by Gary’s passion and expertise, the welding program at Tri-County Community College has grown to become more than an academic program, but an economic engine in the far western end of our state.

There, students gain sophisticated welding skills and travel around the world for jobs as they send money back home to support their families in the mountains.

And Gary is not just a source of instruction for his current students, but a bedrock for his former students, many who call him when bouts of homesickness kick in.

He told of one student, an Iraq War veteran, who recently returned to the mountains after his first-year of employment bragging that his salary that year was greater than the college president’s annual take-home pay.

But my favorite part of his story is when he related having recently received a late-night call from one of his former students, a soldier now stationed in Afghanistan during  a barrage of incoming artillery fire.

Hearing the commotion and noting the lateness of the call, Gary inquired of his nervous former student as to why specifically he was the one he sought out for comfort.

“Because you were the only one I could think of to call” was the response.