Greetings HIWT from Arizona Western College in Yuma. With the Fall 2005 semester over, a few thoughts on the HIWT training materials we adopted this semester. We found the workbooks received good reviews from our adult students who found the logical approach to the applied welding easy to follow. The 212 students and the instructors found the format was consistent with focus on materials and machine settings listed while providing pictures and diagrams to reinforce the concepts and workmanship standards a plus. The program coordinator and lead faculty member Professor Colton (Founder of Welders Without Borders) liked that the listing of materials and consumables for each topic made it easy to develop a budget strategy and procurement document that allowed the purchase of materials in bulk for the administration of the courses. Also, each course offering is broken down by class cost and per student materials cost allowing for end of course efficiency reporting.

The workbooks’ basic information is easily supplemented with Instructor lecture information as well as other code book, library and Internet assignments to complement the level of welding instruction. We adopted manuals for the Oxyfuel, SMAW, GMAW and GTAW welding courses at our college as well as several of the NDT workbooks for our quality control and inspection course. We hope that the inspection series of videos will be updated soon.

We found the DVD set for the GTAW program excellent and this, combined with the workbooks, allowed our part time faculty to administer the courses with confidence. We would highly recommend this system of basic training to any school of welding that is looking to complement its instruction. We were able to easily integrate this material with our efforts to administer the AWS S.E.N.S.E. program.

We are planning to run these products in our courses again next semester as we strive to give our students world class training on state of the art, multi-processor inverter welding technology. Thanks HIWT for the work you’re doing and we will continue to look to you for continuous improvements in the products you provide for welder training worldwide.
 

As always your friend in welding.
Samuel Colton, Professor
Program Coordinator and Lead Faculty Member
Founder of Welders Without Borders

To whom it may concern,

My name is Pete E Scarfone and I attended the Hobart trade school in March 8, 1954. I am now in my seventy fifth year and have been at my trade since I left Hobart. Of course I am retired, and going through some old photos brought back memories. So the information I am trying to locate is about the fellows that attended the same class of that year. I remember a couple of names like Kenneth Warren from Florida, Robert Fowle, Providence, Rhode Island, Hanford Smith, Paducah, Kentucky, Oral Pennington of Indiana, and Harley Dill of Ohio. There are several others but their names slip my mind at present. I was in contact with K. Warren and would like to know the whereabouts of some of the others, especially if they are computer friendly. I know fifty-one years after the fact is a lot to ask for, but its worth a try.

Yours respectfully,
Pete E. Scarfone
pescarfone@hotmail.com

I am currently incarcerated and am in the vocational welding program. I am excelling well. I am really trying to change my life around and this is a very big stepping stone for me. I really want to take my ability to higher peaks in my life. Welding is a very good trade and takes a lot of time and dedication.

Thank you. Robert D. Smith, Jr.

As a teacher/instructor of welding and machine shop at our local High School I think it is important for us as instructors to keep up with new technology. Very often I use your issues to show students how other places do things and the articles are always interesting and educational. The Fall 2005 issue is of great interest to me, as I am also an avid racecar fan, especially Legend cars like the one featured on the cover. We live in northeastern Ontario where racing of that sort is non-existent, but being a fan, I do travel to other parts of Ontario and Canada to get my yearly fix on Legends and racing in general. I have traveled to some parts of the USA to also get a fix from time to time.

I have your poster showing the welder holding the globe in his hands posted up in the shop for students to see. At our school, welding is taught in English and in French because in our part of the country most people are bilingual. We really do appreciate any information you can share with us to help encourage our young people to take trade related courses.

In Canada they have predicted that in the near future we will have a huge shortage of trained skilled trades workers and that we need to convince more of our student population about the skilled trades available, but that is something most trades teachers/instructors have been doing all along. Our government is starting to wake up on these issues. Our own provincial government is finally looking at upgrading tech. shops in high schools across Ontario. Most school shops are outdated because most are of the 1950's, 60's and 70's eras.

I still to this day have an old Hobart generator-powered welder in our shop was passed on by another school and I would guess it is at least 30 or more years old. I personally like to weld with it. Most of our arc welders are of the Hobart brand, which, as a welder, I have always preferred to weld with over other brands. Before I became a teacher I operated my own small business in mobile welding and I had two Hobart generators, 300 gas, and a diesel Titan 250, both welders gave me excellent service.

Thanks for your time.

Yours in Education,
Dan L. Girard
Welding teacher and Dept. Head for Tech. Studies
Iroquois Falls Secondary School
Iroquois Falls, On. Canada