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From the Kerosene Cowboy’s Sports Journal
By: Charles W. Boatright
Importance of VOTECH Colleges on Paul Finebaum– High trades skills help built America that we will needed to Make America Successful. VOTECH Colleges will provide America with skilled workers the ability for achievement and accomplishment
You wouldn’t expect a Chancellor of a community college to call into a sports show and talk about something other than sports, especially leading up to the week No. 1 of college football. But this is what is special about sports that brings together various interests that sparks conversation to enrich people’s interest and awareness of listeners.
Never underestimate how sports can play an important role in all aspects of our daily lives due to all the different backgrounds that are brought together in sports and a sports show. An example of this was yesterday on Paul Finebaum Show when a Chancellor of River Parishes Community College, Chancellor Quintin D. Taylor, called into the show during the last part of Paul’s show.
Chancellor Taylor called Paul to discuss the role that Community Colleges plays in providing successful rewarding futures to young people of all ages with high skilled and high paying jobs. There is an unlimited opportunity and need for high skilled workers to fill the demand to replace those skilled workers that are retiring.
At the present time, there are only 2 skilled workers that are replacing 5 skilled workers retiring. At that pace we won’t have enough highly trained skilled workers to Make America Competitive and productive in the near future. But this provides an unbelievable opportunity for skilled workers.
Companies are so in need of experienced high skill workers, that some companies are calling back and hiring back retired workers. I had firsthand experience of this with ENTERGY, where I worked. In 2020, I was called me back into work after retiring in 2015. This was after two hurricanes, Delta and Laura in September and October, hit the southwest Louisiana area that damaged miles of transmission and distribution lines.
The photograph below was taken the last day that I worked in October of 2020 at the substation.
There are four main reasons that America became the No. 1 Economical Power in the world since the Gilded Age (between 1865 – 1902). The reason was due to the skilled true grit workers that developed their trade.
The four major economic areas that made America Economical Power are- Energy, Transportation, and the juggernaut, our Manufacturing capacity that was proven during World War II. The first three are in desperate need now for trained skilled workers to maintain our economy.
If you want to understand the impact of energy has on our nation economy can be highlighted by cutting domestic production that happened in February of 2021 and see the impact energy has on hiking prices that has a chain reaction across the economy. If energy is curtailed it impacts jobs that include high skill workers in the production and distribution of energy that raises the cost of living across the board. You don’t want to cut jobs in an industry and possibly losing those skill workers.
Energy Sector Skills
Our energy sector is just as significant and essential as our military security and sovereignty is to us as a nation. The demand for energy is only growing based on higher demands placed on our current electric grid that the majority was built between 1935 to the mid 1980’s. We need skilled workers in all areas of the energy and manufacture sector to upgrade and rebuild our electric grid capacity.
I’m all too familiar with the importance of the electric grid and power production working for 36- years with ENTERGY MISSISSIPPI, a utility that servers the southwest grid as a grid engineer. Power production and distribution is at the very heart of our economy. Upgrading the grid and generation will not only require plant operators and linemen, but will also will take manufacturing to supply the material needed for the grid upgrades.
We need more generation capacity that is fueled by natural gas, hydro, and nuclear that are among the cleanest sources of generation, especially small modular generation nuclear units. This will take skilled trades to fill these jobs. It is essential that we get ahead of the curve and start training for these high skilled jobs.
At the present time, we don’t have enough linemen to build and maintain our electric grid. I would strongly suggest community colleges develop apprentice lineman and plant operator courses to train these skills needed. In addition to tremendous earning potential for these energy jobs there is also a tremendous satisfaction working in the energy sector supplying communities.
I personally spent every opportunity that I could with my line crews to understand and learn what I could do to improve their lives and make their jobs easier and safer. I actually revised designs to improve our crews work processes. These are the modern-day cowboys that power our lives.
Manufacturing Sector Skills
Manufacturing sector includes skilled electricians, machinists, pipe fitters, welders, mechanics, fabricators, programmers (e.g. programming plasma table cutters), heavy equipment operators, plumbers, and HVAC technicians just to name a few jobs. Without our manufacturing and our industry capacity our economy would come to a halt.
Transportation Sector Skills
Transportation sector includes highways, rail, shipping, and aviation to build and maintain America infrastructure that will take engineer technicians, construction workers, pilots, truck drivers, and heavy equipment operators.
All these sectors require skilled workers that will provide high earning potential for these skilled workers. Something even more valuable to workers is the satisfaction, personal achievement, and accomplishment that these skill workers experience each day.
The Opportunity of VOTECH Jobs
We usually think of young people in the late teens, twenties, and early thirties enrolling in community colleges, or what I refer to as VOTECH Colleges, to develop and enhance their careers. But that doesn’t include another age group of people, like myself, that are in their fifties and sixties attending VOTECH Colleges to develop a second career.
I attended a local VOTECH College 5- years before I retired; I attended a welding course to prepare for my second career after I retired in 2015. Retirement isn’t your great grandparents’ retirement any longer that was based on leisure lifestyle. But those retiring now want an opportunity to transition into a second career in order to work on their schedule and on their pace.
Welding in my shop, I can lose all track of time on producing Smoker Gridiron Pits that I designed and welded to provide pitmasters with a smoker that can provide great tasting meats consistently.
Smoker/grills are essential for tailgating at football and baseball games to prepare food for one of the biggest social occasions of tailgating and holidays. This provides what we all hold dear and wait all season for with the ability to meet with old friends and to form new friendships while enjoying the outdoors to watch competition on the gridiron or diamond.
Enjoying the Fruits of One’s Labor
Tailgating, hunting, fishing, and other hobbies are what the Bible calls enjoying the fruits of one’s labor noted in Ecclesiastes 5:18-20:
(18) I have seen personally what is the only beneficial and appropriate course of action for people: to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all their hard work on earth during the few days of their life that God has given them,
for this is their reward, enjoying the fruits of one’s labor.
(19) To every man whom God has given wealth and possessions,
he has also given him the ability to eat from them, to receive his reward, and to find enjoyment in his toil; these things are the gift of God.
(20) For he does not think much about the fleeting days of his life
because God keeps him preoccupied with the joy he derives from his activity.