Your Story Made Here: Anthis Career Center
Your Story Made Here: Anthis Career Center
By Melissa Long- 21Alive
May 6, 2014 Updated May 6, 2014 at 5:28 PM EDT
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (21Alive) -- This downstairs workroom has been churning out welders since the 1970's. Welding as a career is as hot as the sparks that fly from the torches here.
Neil says: " As my teacher likes to say, there are a lot of people coming out of college with a 4 year degree and no job. Many of us here at the career center can leave here and get a job right off the bat.
Neil….is a senior. He spends part of his day at……….high school and part of his day learning Tig, stick and mig welding and other skills. He is going to Purdue to become a Mechanical engineer.
Neil says: It's been great. It's really helped me with my future career. I believe it will also help me pay for the university.
He's got that right. Anthis has a number of business partners who hire these students during their tenure here and then will give them full time jobs when they graduate.
Mike…………is the operations manager at Microtech, medical device company.
Mike says:"We typically hire co-op students. They'll come to Microtech and get paid. Learn more about welding and then typically, when they graduatre from high school, we will bring them on full time.
In fact, nearly every employee in the welding operation at Microtech including the quality control managers have gone through the Anthis Welding Program.
Ian Sterling, now a Microtech employee says Anthis sparked his career in welding:
Ian Sterling says:"I learned how to Mig weld, stick weld, tig weld and plasma arc weld. There's all kinds of things I learned here."
Larry Gerardot says: Tony does a wonderful job with the students in the welding program. Great skills but also, he really emphasizes what it takes to work professionally in the community for companies and so our students are pretty successful when they go out. The opportunity to work with business and industry and interact…it causes a tremendous amount of personal growth as well as professional growth. So students grow up a lot in a program like this.
Programs throughout the Anthis career center offer opportunities for certifications and earning dual credits at community colleges like IVY Tech and Vincennes. They are preparing students to start their own story.
