For 2016 Career and Technical School Welding and Metal Fabrication graduate Ian Mayo, the “height” of success in his chosen career is often 100 feet or more off the ground.
Even before graduation, Mayo was parlaying what he’d learned in the classroom and through related work-based learning into a $40-plus/hour job as a full-time journeyman welding atop power plants, off the side of bridges and on construction sites.
“I love working the heights,” Mayo said. “Most of the time I am 100 feet in the air welding half-inch pieces of pipes… but I can also be crunched over a pipe in a small area welding. You never know what you are going to be doing and that’s the excitement of the job.”
“I sort of took things for granted while I was learning at [the Career and Technical School/CTE], but I now know how valuable everything I learned and experienced was,” Mayo said. “My CTE education gave me all I needed to build a welding career… it’s everything I dreamed it would be.”
“It’s amazing that he could skip over the traditional five-year apprenticeship and go right to journeyman,” said Work-Based Learning Coordinator Jim Haas, who helped place Mayo with area business to practice his welding skills while he was in the CTE program. “What a success story!”