Mike Allen: Welding & Beyond

00:00:00 Sumer Beatty: Welcome to Tomorrow Makers, where we explore how we learn, live, work, and play now and in the future. I'm Sumer Beatty. 00:00:11 Carlos Ramos: And I'm Carlos Ramos. Thank you for joining us today. It is now, are we gonna call this one episode two of season two? 00:00:17 Sumer Beatty: Yes. 00:00:18 Carlos Ramos: Okay. 00:00:18 Sumer Beatty: I think so. 00:00:19 Carlos Ramos: All right. 00:00:19 Sumer Beatty: Sounds good. 00:00:20 Carlos Ramos: We promised last time, and we've actually had some people say, we cannot wait to hear How did vacations go? 00:00:27 Sumer Beatty: Oh, I wasn't prepared for this. 00:00:31 Carlos Ramos: You had the, probably the most fun ones, 00:00:33 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:00:34 Carlos Ramos: Let's just do yours. We don't have to do mine at all. 00:00:36 Sumer Beatty: My family and I went to France and Switzerland, mostly France. haven't been out of the country in 15 years. Things are a little different. yeah, it was, really fun though. It was a great experience. Nice to have my, son there and. Just experience a different culture, some great food, all those fun things. 00:00:59 Carlos Ramos: So something you recommend? 00:01:01 Sumer Beatty: Oh yeah, international travel, yes, you've got to do it. 00:01:05 Carlos Ramos: And we've been doing a lot of jobs lately to promote international travel, global studies for our students. 00:01:11 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness, yeah. And I know a lot of those students, it is their first time out of the country, so that is such a worthwhile experience. 00:01:19 Carlos Ramos: So if you're a student listening, Go find the posters, but I know we've got, what, at least two or three that are going to Dominican Republic for different things, like dental, there's a service learning one, I forget what the other one might be. 00:01:33 Sumer Beatty: I think five different initiatives. Yeah, I just saw posters were up in architecture today. yeah. Watch out. I'm sure they'll be up if they're not already. 00:01:43 Carlos Ramos: And they're going like all over Europe, right? Or is it mostly 00:01:47 Sumer Beatty: I think Italy. We should, I should know this, but you know what, you just go to There were a lot of posters. There were a lot of different places. 00:01:55 Carlos Ramos: And if, you don't want to even go look for the posters, you can go to pct.edu/global and that'll take you to... 00:02:00 Sumer Beatty: Get the facts. Don't base it on our... 00:02:02 Carlos Ramos: That's right. Don't trust us. 00:02:03 Sumer Beatty: But I can say those photos of some of the places in, in Italy were amazing. My gosh. Just be beautiful coastlines. One looked like it was in, was Cinque Terre, that just all the brightly colored buildings right on that coast with the waters, bluest, greenest water looked amazing. 00:02:22 Carlos Ramos: I definitely had some envy when I was seeing your stuff. But anyway, so you're back. We're back. and we've, we've got our, second guest of the season. Cause we, we spoke with Nate last time and it was a fantastic conversation. We're seeing lots of great comments. Thanks. around that online. don't forget to share your, thoughts with us at podcast at pct. edu. But who do we have today? 00:02:47 Sumer Beatty: We have Mike Allen. He is co department head of the welding program. 00:02:52 Carlos Ramos: Oh my gosh, this program, if you don't know anything about Penn College and you're in the area, you've probably seen, a billboard or something. It's like everyone says, you don't need to feature welding on the billboard, but it's beautiful. 00:03:02 Sumer Beatty: Oh, it's the most, yeah, the arcs and sparks. I think I said that this morning. We can't, every program doesn't have sparks. really, what more could you want as a marketer? 00:03:12 Carlos Ramos: It's the biggest program we have, and it's still not big enough. Like we can't, our facilities aren't big enough to hold everyone who wants to come here I think that's amazing. 00:03:23 Sumer Beatty: Oh, it is. Yeah. Mike has an easy job. 00:03:26 Carlos Ramos: He does. 00:03:28 Sumer Beatty: Don't tell him we said that. 00:03:30 Carlos Ramos: No, actually, it's really, I think it's a challenge because you've been over to the labs when they're, active. they're open, before sunrise and then... 00:03:40 Sumer Beatty: After evening, 00:03:41 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. You've got hundreds of students in there just arcing and sparking. 00:03:45 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:03:45 Carlos Ramos: Like you said, 00:03:46 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, I appreciated hearing how, I asked him about the, how do you make sure the program's relevant? You have this advisory committee, right? And he just laughed at me. And it sounds like the team members there are so proactive in making sure our students have the right equipment, and we're right up to industry standards. And he's so passionate about it. You can just hear that it totally comes through. 00:04:09 Carlos Ramos: And he, it was like a mid career shift for him to come in and start teaching. As it is, I think for a lot of the faculty in that, department, as well as others, with what nearly like 20 years of experience all over the world, doing welding in traditional form, underwater welding. Some amazing experiences. 00:04:30 Sumer Beatty: He's such an understated guy. 00:04:32 Carlos Ramos: All right, so you ready to get into it? 00:04:35 Sumer Beatty: Absolutely. 00:04:36 Carlos Ramos: Okay, here we go. Tomorrow Makers with Mike Allen. 00:04:45 Sumer Beatty: Hello and welcome. 00:04:46 Mike Allen: Hello, Sumer. How are you doing today? 00:04:48 Sumer Beatty: I'm great. How are you? 00:04:49 Mike Allen: Oh, this doesn't get any better than this. 00:04:52 Sumer Beatty: He came to us this morning and said, I've never been on a podcast, but I have been on TV. 00:04:58 Mike Allen: Yeah. What was that about? 00:04:59 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:05:00 Mike Allen: when we first got the renovation done over in the welding department, why they had all the news stations coming in to do, you interviews and check the place out and so on. So we, we ended up doing probably three or four different interviews with WNEP and Fox News and all of them guys. So it, it was, pretty interesting. 00:05:22 Sumer Beatty: How'd you get picked to do that? Or were a bunch of faculty involved? 00:05:25 Mike Allen: As the department head, that was one of the things that, you know, and I was involved with the construction of that project and everything else. So that's, They came to me most of the time, so I, got to answer a lot of questions about the whole thing, Which I'm sure you'll answer. Ask me some questions today about that. 00:05:41 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, I was gonna say, you've been involved in so many things over the last few years at the college. you mentioned the welding expansion, the, Living Chapel that made its way to, to Italy, just like so many things. That's amazing. 00:05:57 Mike Allen: It, that project was quite interesting. It was a little bit of faculty, a little bit of students, getting together with the main campus of Penn State, working with their students, The whole finished product was amazing when it was done because the whole chimes and everything that they made, behind the scenes, it was, unreal. It was neat to be part of that whole thing. 00:06:27 Sumer Beatty: And we have some articles we can link to for background on that, but I just think that goes to show, you have, a curriculum, you have classes that you're trying to run, and then someone comes You know, with this amazing idea and you're like, sure, we'll do it. We'll just, incorporate that into our every day and we'll make it happen. 00:06:46 Mike Allen: It, yes. There's a lot behind that too, because, we're following the curriculum. It's not like we can just drop everything and do something different. But we did make it work and there was a lot of, extra hours put into that because, weekends and everything else with faculty being here to, to work on cutting the parts and doing all the fitting and stuff like that. And, once it was done, it was neat, but it, there was a lot to it. 00:07:20 Carlos Ramos: And you're not a small program. No. how many students are in the program right now? 00:07:26 Mike Allen: I'm not sure of exactly of the number right now, but there was over 380 this year. So we're full for next year now already, we'll be bringing in at least 135 freshmen this year. Yeah, we've got multiple sections of the same classes running every day. So basically, 8 to noon, noon to 4, 5 to 10 at night. So there's three shifts going on. At least a hundred students on the floor at a time, pretty much, between all the sections and every class that's going on with, the robotics classes, our CNC classes, blueprints, NDT classes, and all of that. So there's a lot happening there. 00:08:11 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, going through that lab, it's an experience for anyone who hasn't come to an Open House and, check it out. Welding's not your thing. It's just incredible and amazing to see, the students in action, so, often, yes, the faculty there and the guide and things, but the students are just, they are doing their thing and they are, they're learning the craft right from day one and they're applying it every single moment. It's crazy. Yep, you're right. 00:08:42 Sumer Beatty: It is a busy place. It is not a quiet place to record any type of marketing collateral at all. 00:08:48 Mike Allen: No, we should put a soundproof room in there if you're going to do that kind of stuff over there. 00:08:53 Sumer Beatty: It's a gorgeous facility though. 00:08:54 Mike Allen: Yeah, it's It took a while to get it accomplished, though, because it was, there was a lot to that, redesigning it three or four times to make it big enough, and it isn't big enough now, but 00:09:06 Sumer Beatty: Will it ever be big enough? 00:09:07 Mike Allen: I don't, I can't answer that question. 00:09:10 Sumer Beatty: Right. 00:09:10 Mike Allen: Because it, equipment wise, it's not big enough right now, we can't get some of the stuff in there, that I'd like to put in there, laser cutting table and stuff like that, that, to add to the, fabrication and the things, excuse me, right now we just can't get it, squared it away, 00:09:32 Carlos Ramos: And you have some pretty big pieces of equipment in there now. There's you there's a it's a plasma cutter, right? Yes, there's two really large. 00:09:39 Mike Allen: There's two of them Yeah, one's the big one the sew a tob and then the other one is our smaller unit Which will do 4 by 8 sheets of metal. So the big one will do 6 by 12 sheets. So we normally do 5 by 10 It's a little easier to put on and off of the table there. So depending on how thick it is. 00:10:01 Sumer Beatty: Before we got into that, I was curious, I've heard all these awesome things about your background. So you graduated from Penn College and then you went and worked in industry. Tell us about that. 00:10:13 Mike Allen: All right. I started, vo-tech program here when it was Williamsport Area Community College through, I went to Jersey Shore High School. So that was. part of our tech program to come down here to weld. I started welding on the farm where I grew up, like 13. And, I, was like, this is really cool, so one day I was like watching TV and this underwater welding guy came up on the screen and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool, so I was like, Alright, so I went to school and did the welding thing for the two years of high school, and then I came here for a year afterwards and got a certificate because they didn't have all the degrees they have now, and I'm not going to say when this was, but 00:11:03 Carlos Ramos: it was Williamsport Area Community College, before 89. 00:11:07 Mike Allen: So once I got the certificate, I ended up going out and getting a job with an erection company building steel buildings and so forth and then I only worked for them for a little while, but I got into doing boiler installations and repair work and so forth. So once, I just started doing that. There was a lot of travel with that. So it was, you had to go where the jobs were and that's the norm for this industry. But once I, got into that, why I met my girlfriend and then she, I kept telling her about this underwater welding thing and, she's you need to go do this because I don't need to listen to this the rest of my life if I'm around, so I'm like, okay, so I went and checked out the dive school in Camden, New Jersey, which is at the time, I don't know if they changed the name of it now, but it was Divers Academy of the Eastern Seaboard, so I went there for five months, that was all the longer the course was, once I got done with that course, I got hired for a company, in Essex, Connecticut. And that company then did inland diving is what they basically were scheduled to do, but they, we did a lot of nuclear power work. So we did, we dove on nuclear power plants and did the components of the reactors and worked on that kind of stuff. that job was the neatest job I've ever had in my life. And it's, probably would have done it longer, but, I had some, disagreements with pay rate so that, that kind of changed my mind a little bit so I did it for over a year and a half and I got to see the world basically. So I got to go to Japan a couple of times and work over there and we did all kinds of jobs throughout the US and all the nuclear plants and, we did work on rivers and lakes and streams and stuff like that. We did stuff in Lake Michigan and so forth. So it, was, quite the interesting project for the job. 00:13:17 Carlos Ramos: It's interesting to hear you talk about that, that the pay wasn't there for this one particular position. Because underwater welders, they make bank, right? 00:13:26 Sumer Beatty: I was thinking the same because I feel like there's a little bit of hazard to, to that. 00:13:30 Mike Allen: There is, and there's a limit on how long you can do it in most cases. No later than 35 is probably the oldest that you can be to be in the diving industry as far as getting in the water. The time frame when I was doing all of this was the turnover rate was unreal with all the employees and everything because they, were going wherever the money was, but the money wasn't that big at the time. If you did any kind of a, like a certification or something for a different welding process or a different welding position and so forth, you'd get more money. So throughout the year, I did this with this company and I got more money and dah, And when it came time for my review and all of that, they said, We can't give you any more money. We'll give you a quarter. I'm like, I don't think that's a good idea. So at that point in time, I was like, it's crazy. I'm not, doing this. I can make more money back at home in PA, and I just packed my stuff and said, see ya and came back here and, actually went into the boiler work again where I had worked prior to, and I make more money per hour when I got back here than I was making in the shop up there. But. I can't say that I didn't make money when we were on the road diving because we did, but it was just a matter of the company wasn't satisfying to me. You know what I mean? So I could have done, offshore diving and so forth, but I hesitated to do that because they would not let you get in the water for two years. You had to be a tender, which work in the top side of things before they let you get in the water. So I was like, I'm not waiting two years to jump in the ocean, so that's it. 00:15:22 Carlos Ramos: To me, that seems like so totally reasonable. 00:15:26 Sumer Beatty: yes, you want to make sure you're very prepared. 00:15:30 Mike Allen: And, I get that too, but it was like, I was young and I was like, I need to get, I need to do something, but the jobs that we did for that industry were unreal because there was so much, like we did R&D, we've worked with different companies to, to actually build equipment that we used underwater and so on and so forth. And that was the neatest part of that whole job too, because it was like, okay, get in the dive tank at the shop and run this handheld plasma cutter. And basically you want to cut through this piece of stainless steel that's three inches thick. So we had to design the machine. And a torch and everything that would actually cut that and that was undertaking because actually Hypertherm who we use here at the college for plasma cutting machines Are the ones we worked with in the dive company there to help design and build these torches and power sources To do the job we had to do so it was pretty nifty . 00:16:30 Sumer Beatty: From when you were in it in terms of the pay rate and the competitiveness of... 00:16:39 Mike Allen: diving is like a construction job. So it's seasonal a lot of the time. So you make the money you make when you can make it, basically. And that's how you do it in construction most of the time also. So you could work six months and be off six months. And the as far as the money goes, I'm sure it's a little bit more per hour now than it was before, but I haven't done it in a while, But I haven't really looked to see what the rates are for those guys these days, but I've talked to a couple different, students that were looking into doing it, and they were like, okay, it's not. Paying like we thought it would, Now if you get on an oil rig and you're doing that kinda work, you're doing saturation diving and so forth, why it's going to pay you an astronomical amount of money, but it may only be a three month job, so you're off the rest of the time. Typically in that industry, it's six, six on, six off. So six months on the platform, six months off for the rest of the year. that 00:17:47 Sumer Beatty: doesn't sound too bad, actually. I don't know what the problem is. 00:17:51 Mike Allen: But granted, you, you can work topside or land on the land at the, wherever their house or their shop may be. You may not be off for six months. It just depends on the whole layout of things, but, if you make, $100,000 in six months, are you going to be... 00:18:14 Carlos Ramos: I think I'm okay with the other six months off. 00:18:17 Mike Allen: Yeah, or are you going to save your money or not? 00:18:22 Sumer Beatty: So this diving piece is such a niche. What are the other areas that graduates go into? 00:18:30 Mike Allen: They're going into a lot of different things. People used to think about this career as dirty arcs and sparks and, getting burnt and heat and all of that. Anymore, it's more about the science of what this is. process does or how it works and so forth. The students that, leave here with a two year degree, most of them are about getting out there making money and they'll do the welding and do, not to say that they, they can start their own companies and do their own thing. but the four year students are the ones that are actually like out there looking for the big money jobs and the industry that they're looking at, manufacturing industry, construction industry, aerospace, nuclear power. And, even some of them will do equipment sales. So they'll go to work for Miller or Fronius or ESAB or Lincoln or whoever builds the welding machines and so forth. be able to sell them. They could help do R&D work with those machines, figure out different waveforms or so on, to build the equipment, to make them work better. Automotive Industry uses a ton of our students for robotic welding and so on and so forth. So the, the newest thing that we've, been trying to get set up is our whole NDT. 00:20:02 Carlos Ramos: That's non destructive testing, right? 00:20:04 Mike Allen: Correct. And that's the process that they use to test all the products that were built without destroying them. you could do an x-ray on them, you could do ultrasonic testing, visual testing, and so on. So there's six major processes in that field that they use to test that kind of stuff. 00:20:20 Sumer Beatty: Test like bridges and 00:20:22 Mike Allen: Right. 00:20:22 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:20:22 Mike Allen: Yep. Yeah. And then 90 percent of the stuff in this room was welded at one point in time too. You know what I mean? So all of this quality control stuff and so on, that's what they're getting into. And, there's companies like Miller, Lincoln, and I mentioned them before, but Curtis Wright and John Deere and Caterpillar and so on, those guys, I know you've heard of them. They've been on campus. They, the students are going there and They're proving themselves, you know, so it's pretty nifty. 00:20:53 Carlos Ramos: That's a relatively new program for us, like two years, right? 00:20:56 Mike Allen: For the NDT? Yes, it's it's an associate degree. And basically, when they're done, they have the opportunity to take a written test to get qualified for having done all of their lecture portion of that industry. So that trade. Once they, acquire the written portion of it, then they have to still go do like hands on time. they have to get real world experience for so many hours before they actually can get the complete certificate or certification for whatever process their, they're doing. it could be, it could be x-ray, it could be a ultrasonic testing. It could be, mag particle. There's a lot of different things that they, but there's focus points as to what they specialize in. So here again, you got to have a lot of hands on time to get the, certificate or the certification. 00:21:53 Sumer Beatty: And for perspective, how did that program originate? We have an advisory board, correct? So we've got these industry leaders informing you know, faculty and, staff. What, is the next program? What does industry need? Is that how that works? You're laughing. Explain. 00:22:13 Mike Allen: That's how it works in a way. Yes. But a lot of it comes for us. It comes from our industry partners or even companies coming to us and saying, Hey, We need some people that can do NDT, we need some people that can run robots, or whatever it may be. And at that point, we sit down, talk about some things that we could possibly do, and how we could add certain aspects to their curriculum, and make it work. Most of the time, we've been attending like our trade shows and so on for quite a few years now. And that's where we learn a lot of things because it's, we're out there with them and they're telling us, Hey, this is what we need to do. And, so on and so forth. And by the time we get back here from the show, we've got a million ideas going through our heads, to try to figure out how to do some of this stuff. And I think we've been doing a pretty decent job of keeping up with some of the stuff, not. everything because we can't do it all. Some of the equipment we needed, we don't have. So in order to try to keep up with industry, but the, the way we have the shop set up now with the whole fab area and, all the welding booths, there's seven or eight welding station or boot labs there now. They're doing multiple different processes at the same time, which is what industry, needs. They, they could go from sub arc welding to basically running the robot the next day or, so they're versed in a lot of different things, the students are, so it's Okay. what next, and, we're working on some things now to try to add to it, but, we've got a minor starting in robotics here. We just got it rolling last semester, so we're going to see how that fits. Hopefully it works. But we got to keep the robots up and running to keep all that going on. And there's a lot of things that we are going to do in that, minor that not everybody gets to do as far as, when they walk out the door. So offline programming and so on and so forth, like our four year guys get a little bit of it, but then if they do the minor, they're going to get a lot more of it. So there's, different waveforms in these power sources, different processes. So you could weld MIG welding with the robot. You could do laser welding with the robot, laser cutting. You could do plasma arc welding with a robot. There's a lot of different processes that you can use with the robot. So everything I've just mentioned, we do now here at this in our facility. 00:25:04 Sumer Beatty: I saw that robotics and I didn't realize it was connected to welding specifically because we have robotics integrated into a whole bunch of different programs. So is it in addition to the robotics one that I might have seen or? 00:25:16 Mike Allen: Do you mean the minor? 00:25:17 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, the minor, yeah. 00:25:18 Mike Allen: Yeah, the minor's encompassing robotics and machining, welding. There's four different programs. 00:25:25 Sumer Beatty: Oh, that's awesome. I can see. 00:25:27 Mike Allen: I can't remember who else is involved with it right now. 00:25:29 Sumer Beatty: Oh yeah. yeah, that's not a surprise because like I said, I feel like robotics is so ingrained in a bunch of different programs. So that's good to hear. 00:25:36 Carlos Ramos: I'm used to seeing that, if you're in a major, you can't take the minor in the major, but it sounds like because it's coming probably from that automated engineering side that allows the welders to take those minors. 00:25:50 Mike Allen: Yeah, that's correct. And that, that leaves machinists to be able to jump around in the welders and even the guys that are doing, electronics and so on, they're all part of it. The students will go from our shop over to electronics and then they'll go over to the automated manufacturing lab. So they're. They're jumping between a whole bunch of different labs, so it's intermingled anymore, 00:26:16 Carlos Ramos: So that's great, because it is such a, an amazing collection of different programs and engineering technologies that we have, and to have that cross pollination. So powerful. 00:26:27 Mike Allen: Yes, and that, that's, that's one of the reasons I like working here, because we get to work with, multiple different aspects of things. We may be, excuse me, we may be doing a project with Machine Shop. Or, and they're working with us to do, fixtures and stuff for our, robotic cells and so on. making jigs and so forth to hold the parts in place to program to come in and weld and so forth. it's pretty cool, and working with, we've worked with, the CAD department, doing stuff with AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS and so forth to try to enhance everything that we're doing in our . every day to day life. 00:27:12 Sumer Beatty: I think you're doing something right. the program is very popular. It is. How, if you're a student in high school house, how early do you need to apply in order to, get in? it is quite popular. . 00:27:25 Mike Allen: Yeah. You wanna try to be getting, if you want to come here for welding, you want to try to be getting in the door your junior year, if you can. 00:27:35 Carlos Ramos: But you can't apply until essentially the senior year or August 1 of your rising year, right? 00:27:42 Mike Allen: Correct. But get here, check the place out, make sure that's what you want to do. Because there's certain things that, if you might like to weld, but I don't want to go through two years of sitting here standing in your booth welding every day or, but it's not all about that either. It's, we, make it so that you're, welding four hours a day typically and the rest of the time you're either, going to a math class, doing gen ed stuff and so forth, but you're also doing a blueprint class. You're also doing a non destructive testing class and other things that are involved in that, in that industry. So it's not all, just standing in a welding booth and doing that, which is what they would do in a high school class or something like that. in most cases, some, may have some fabrication equipment or something, but not to the extent that we do here. 00:28:39 Sumer Beatty: No, and that's a good point. You got to come and see it early when you're talking about it. When you said seven labs, I feel like, It's as if you're walking into an Amazon warehouse full of toys. it's huge. 00:28:50 Mike Allen: For the most part, the seven labs that we have that we focus on, we use them for basically all the major processes. So they're all on the north wall of the welding lab. So there's 18 booths per lab, and typically we try to keep the class size at 15 ish range, but with the enrollment the way it is, it's sometimes it gets higher than that. But just so we can try to get everybody in and start doing something. Students aren't happy if they're not welding, 00:29:21 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, because I just did the quick math on 126 individual booths, 380 students over three shifts. That means they're probably, they're students, because I've seen it, they're students in each one of those booths all the time. 00:29:35 Mike Allen: Exactly. And the way it goes is typically, depending on the semester, we have You know, certain semesters where they'll do TIG welding and MIG welding and then flux core and stick welding and so on, but we flip flop every, eight weeks. So the student would start out, say, doing MIG welding the first eight weeks, and then after they get done with the first eight weeks, they'll go into TIG welding for eight weeks. So it's, it helps break up the monotony of the same process for 16 weeks total. So once we do the first eight weeks and the second eight weeks, the next semester, then they're going into the advanced classes of basically the same processes, but it's a little harder. So like with a MIG welding class, once you do the basic one, you're going into the advanced. Make a class second or next. And when you do that, it's not as much about the welding as it is about all the troubleshooting to fix the equipment, how to make things work with the right waveforms, and how there's different processes out there that they're using now, different waveforms and so on that they're using now to be able to weld a, an open root with a MIG welder, which when I first started doing this, that was hard to do. An open root is a gap between the two pieces of metal. So it could be a 16th of an inch opening or an eighth inch opening or 3/32. But in that opening, there's nothing there. So you have to actually fuse the two pieces of metal together using whatever process, obviously. But with the MIG welding process, there's different that they're using with they call it STT, RMD and so on that basically are set up and designed to be able to use that process to weld that open root without, like before the wire would shoot through the hole to the gap and then we'd have little porcupine needles sticking out the backside and it was very hard to do. So now the way that these machines are, they're a phenomenal as far as being able to weld like that. So it's, it's. It's all about computers, and, being able to set it up and it's, that's what it is anymore, So there's the rectifier welding machines are a thing of the past. 00:32:04 Carlos Ramos: And that would be like what I might see on the back of a diesel pickup truck going down the road, the set up 00:32:11 Mike Allen: Yes, the old ones, the newer ones are computerized a little bit too. They have boards in them and so on, but it's the same concept. Yes. 00:32:21 Sumer Beatty: Are you, do you get involved in any kind of creative welding projects or is it more functional? 00:32:26 Mike Allen: Oh yeah. 00:32:27 Sumer Beatty: You specifically or just generally, even your students? Because I have seen some students who enjoy the creative process of doing things outside of class and just using those skills in different ways. 00:32:39 Mike Allen: With our department, We try to let like their student chapter do the creative stuff and do some like the artwork things, but yes, I've had classes where we've done stuff for the college, like the wine glass that hangs off the side of the Le Jeune Chef. We cut that out in our CNC classes and I had the students draw it all up, lay it all out. We cut it out over there on the CNC machine and gave it back to GS and let them put it together. But, we've also done projects for like, Lycoming Engines where we build a platform or a stage that they're assembling in between two pieces of equipment that they just bought, which is actually one of the pieces that were, that was on loan here at the machine shop. They bought two of them now, so the staging was for between the two machines. That was all out of aluminum, so the students got to build that from top to bottom. 00:33:36 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, how does that work? That sounds like a good problem solving example. 00:33:41 Mike Allen: They sent us the prints. And basically, it was just like in industry, the prints needed revised. The, everything was just like it would be when you go out and get a job because they had issues with getting certain parts, then they over designed things, and then they had to change it, and so on and so forth, but it all fell into these blueprint classes very nicely because they were like, oh my god, this is crazy, why do we gotta, do all this and that? This is the way it is. Okay, you're going to get a set of prints in the real world, and they may not be what you need, right? And you may know that, okay, if you go over here and put a pipe in that corner of that room, that it's going to run into the ductwork that's above the ceiling, and how do you fix that? That's where they're saying the pipes needs to be, so somebody's got to revise something, right? and that's what that whole project was like. So it worked out well for, I had three sections of classes working on it, so it was at least 16 people at a time. 00:34:45 Sumer Beatty: And that's great real world experience. So if somebody is a recent graduate and they don't, have that job experience to put on their resume, they can say, here's something I worked on. And, it simulates that to a degree. 00:34:57 Mike Allen: Yep. That's exactly. And that's what we try to do is simulate what's going on out there. Students, sometimes they don't get it until they've actually do an internship or something. And when they go out in the summer and get an internship or a job, and they come back in the fall, they're like, Oh my gosh, I, I guess I need to listen to you now. 00:35:20 Carlos Ramos: Imagine that. 00:35:22 Mike Allen: It's yeah. And one guy says to me, Cause I typically do a fire pit project in our blueprint, our advanced blueprint class. And I make them actually lay all the stuff out on the floor with soapstone. They draw it, and then when they roll the parts that they need for the actual fire pit, they have to match the drawing that they made on the floor. And the one kid's I don't know, why we have to do this, da if we measure across here and it's 32 inches, that's what we need it to be. I said, yeah, but you actually have to cut this thing off and make it on an angle and make it match the other parts and so on. okay. So the kid came back from his internship and he says, I started drawing stuff on the floor at work this summer. I was like, ah, did it work for you? Oh yeah, he says it worked really well. I said, okay. 00:36:18 Sumer Beatty: That's great. Instant gratification for you. Are internships required? I know a lot of students get them and 00:36:25 Mike Allen: The internships are required for graduation for the four year students. So the two year students are not required to do one, but it's recommended if they get the opportunity to be able to work over the summer to, do it. 00:36:37 Sumer Beatty: And they're often paid, 00:36:38 Mike Allen: correct? Yeah. Most of them won't do it if they're not paid anymore. So.... 00:36:42 Carlos Ramos: does the school assist with fitting students to internships or they didn't need to do a little legwork on their own. 00:36:48 Mike Allen: With our department, the way it's set up is They need to do the legwork. So we encourage them to do the career fairs and all the info sessions and everything that we do throughout the year to try to get in touch with these companies and so on. So if there's companies that email us, we put it out there for the students to see so they can apply or, contact that company to see if, If they're qualified to do what they want them to do and so on. But, this summer we have, I think it's 40 ish students out doing internships. So there's, basically two sections of classes going on this summer with the internship stuff. It's, quite gratifying to me when they come back and they say, Hey, I learned something this summer. I realized why you're telling us this stuff now, or, why did we have to set this machine up this way? Here's why, and, depending on the company, they could be welding different types of metals, like stainless aluminum, titaniums, whatever it may be. And it's okay, we don't do a lot of the high alloy stuff here. It's just, because it's too expensive, for one thing, but they get the opportunity to mess around with it when they get there and do an internship or a job for the summer and so on, If they can TIG weld or stick weld, most of the time they get thrown on any kind of project that they can throughout the summer. 00:38:22 Carlos Ramos: How often will those internships lead to full time employment? 00:38:26 Mike Allen: Just about every time, if the student wants it. and that's another thing with an internship, the student gets to see if there's something they like or not. they may go do an internship at Autokineton and run robots all summer and program and figure out troubleshooting and so on. Some guys don't like that, or some students don't like that. So it's okay. I don't want to do that now So I'm gonna find something else to do. Maybe I'll get into sales or get into Doing R&D or something like that, But it's one of those things where the student has to like it obviously when they're done So if not, why what's the point I guess, so. 00:39:13 Carlos Ramos: Now, what was that? Was it a company, organization, you, auto? 00:39:17 Mike Allen: Autokiniton. They're, yes, they're a, automotive company that produces, parts for cars and trucks and so on. and they have multiple different facilities throughout the country. I think we have two or three, at least, at that facility this year. and I'm not sure which plants they're at, but they're in Tennessee. They're in Michigan. They're around. 00:39:42 Sumer Beatty: Yeah I mean it sounds like by the way, you framed it the balls really in the students court, right? Like they have opportunities for multiple jobs. It's not they're just taking what they can get They have the luxury of testing things out and see what they'd like to do. 00:39:57 Mike Allen: Right. And I always tell them, you are the one that has to go find this internship because you got to go through the hiring process. And it's a great. It's a different learning experience for them. So some of these interviews that these companies do, it just blows these guys minds because they're like, how are they asking me all these questions like this. And we're like, cause that's what they're supposed to be doing. So it's okay. But, and like I said, when they're done with it. And they come back, it's a totally different person in most cases, because they're like, wow, it's, I didn't realize we, we could do, all of these different processes with this robot or whatever it may be, it's, I got to run an electron beam welder this summer that, that's really cool and dah, So it's, and us having one helps that industry also too. 00:40:56 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, students have said that it's nice, or graduates rather, when they do go into industry, they've had exposure to so many different pieces of equipment and processes that when they get there, they feel like, they're confident and they can do whatever is called on them. 00:41:10 Carlos Ramos: And an electron beam welder, that's, not like just in every, corner school here, right? 00:41:18 Mike Allen: No, it's, I think as far as I know, we're the only educational facility in the country that has one of these. And that makes us unique in that aspect, but I would say probably eight, nine years ago, all of a sudden I started getting all these emails from these companies about electron beam welding. And I was like, okay, and I wasn't that familiar with it at that point in time either. So what we did was did a little research and we added some of that theoretical side of that into some of these classes we have. And there must've been 10 companies. that emailed and asked about our students if they knew anything about this or whatever, and I couldn't do any of it. And I'm like, no, we can talk about it a little bit, but other than that, and it's a lot like laser welding in a way, but it's just a different process. But once we started talking to the company that provided us with our machine, we, we got a better insight to what that industry was like and what it was all about, because it's aerospace industry, a lot of it. And it's graduating towards some other industries at this point in time too, but it's, a very clean process. There's no contamination in the weld unless there's a problem in the vacuum chamber that it has to be done in a vacuum. So this is something you can do in outer space. But you can show these guys how it works and basically An aerospace company would more than likely pick you up if they knew that you can actually run one of these things or, operate the equipment or even troubleshoot it and fix it and so on. That's another part of the industry that we're looking at trying to help out some more because right now, all this equipment that everybody's building is great, but there's no service techs to work on the stuff. There's not enough, I should say. So companies like, Trumpf, Amada, all these big name companies that build fabrication equipment, or even the, electron beam equipment and so on and so forth, there's not enough industry technicians to be able to work on that kind of stuff. So here again, working with our electrical department, we're working at mechatronics and trying to help. Build that a little bit with our partnership with the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association. We're trying to help build some relationships there to get our students better job, more jobs out there and so on and so forth. But, we can't fill them all. 00:44:13 Sumer Beatty: So we're probably biased. We think Penn College is the best thing, right? but what is From your perspective, when you see students parents come for Open House, what is drawing students to the welding program at Penn College? Is it, the equipment, the electron beam welder? Is it the job placement? Is it the facility? Is it you're just so awesome people come and meet you and they're like, I'm sold? 00:44:36 Mike Allen: It's a combination of everything you just said. 00:44:37 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:44:38 Mike Allen: Okay, because a lot of the time when you physically see something, It's a lot better than looking at a picture on the screen and so on. When, you have faculty coming in to talk to people that, come to tour the place and so on, a lot of the time, if I do a tour with the students, the parents are more impressed with the place than the students are at times. Because the students have been, like, doing this stuff at high school or whatever, but the, some of the parents are like, Oh my god, I need to come back to school, and it's not just welding, it's other departments too, but it's yeah, to physically see the stuff and actually see students working with the stuff that sells the program. 00:45:23 Carlos Ramos: All right, so you hear that parents, don't wait for your kids to want to go for a tour, just even come without the kids. You're welcome. 00:45:35 Sumer Beatty: So do you want to share any success stories students have had that you can recall recent graduates or past graduates out there? Just. Doing awesome in the workforce. 00:45:44 Mike Allen: There's a lot of them. Lately, the female students have been rocking the engineering world with a lot of the companies out there. So we've got four or five females that are doing rather well at different companies. I don't want to just single out specific people. 00:46:05 Carlos Ramos: We can single out, because we have a video feature on a couple of our women that are down at Harley Davidson. 00:46:13 Mike Allen: That's two of them that I was thinking about. They've done rather well with their careers. 00:46:20 Carlos Ramos: This is Erin and Frannie, right? 00:46:21 Mike Allen: Correct. It's Erin and Frannie. And, they you know, they're the two that stick out in my mind the most because, we were with them the whole time they were here, obviously, and they were, shy at the beginning of this whole thing. So they, they opened up, and I think that's another thing with these, with this program. The students in the four year, they, end up being more open, being, more apt to actually contact you after they get out of here or graduate, and they're willing to talk to you and tell you what they're doing, whereas you can't do that with two year students most of the time because they're in and out of here and they're gone. But, we've also got some, gentlemen that are doing extraordinary things these days too with, the nuclear industry, nuclear power industry. We have a young man who's, doing some R&D work for them, and he, he no more and graduated and they were on him and he's a very good student, or he was a very good student, but he is now, six figures to start. And I'm like, I need that job. 00:47:42 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, it is something when you see the students come out of here and you're like, wait a minute, you guys are making, wait a minute, how much? What am I, doing? 00:47:50 Mike Allen: Yes. Yes. And that. To me, it's cool too, because, the students get out there and, they, actually make enough to survive, whereas, when I first started here, I didn't have the opportunities that these guys have, because they, we didn't have. the internet to search everything and so forth, but the, the way things go today, these guys that are making out and doing well, this one student would not have been able to go to Los Alamos National Laboratories and go to work without being here and actually going to the career fairs and talking to these guys, And that to me is awesome. But those guys are making out real well. There's, there's company there, there's kids there, students that, have graduated, started their own companies and they're doing phenomenal also. So they, and they, they didn't minor in the business or anything like that, they just did their thing and they started their own little welding shop and so on and so forth. There's a, guy that's actually building, I don't know what they're, term would be, it's not like monster trucks, but it's customized vehicles and, doing, custom work for company or for people that are like on the West Coast and he's in Bellefonte. So it's, really cool, to see some of that stuff. There's other students that, have gotten into the electric car industry and started there and now they're, doing all kinds of different things. It's, there's so many. neat stories out there that I just can't talk about all of them. 00:49:44 Sumer Beatty: Oh yeah, of course. That was a great sampling though. 00:49:46 Carlos Ramos: If you're listening to this and you're one of those great stories or you're like, Oh yeah, I've just been doing this. This is what I do. And you're awesome by the way, please email us. Let us know pct. edu and we'll make sure we can share it. Send us an audio clip too, that would be even better. 00:50:03 Sumer Beatty: Send us a photo, send us whatever you want, we'll take it. Yeah, I'm sure the stories are plentiful. 00:50:09 Mike Allen: Yes, they are. 00:50:11 Sumer Beatty: One thing I thought was really cool, and I don't think it's a recent thing, but, knowing that there's this technical trade of welding, and those students in the program are in SGA, in our Student Government Association. A couple of them, I think Franny was a commencement speaker. Other students have been commencement speakers in the, from welding. And it's they're involved in all of these other things that almost give you that, business esque background where, it's not just they're going and they're welding and, it's, one sided. They're getting that full college experience and they're really involved across campus. 00:50:50 Mike Allen: That's very true. And there's now. starting to be a lot more students that are in sports also. 00:50:56 Sumer Beatty: Oh, good point. 00:50:57 Mike Allen: Doing pretty cool things also, it's it can be a troublesome scheduling things around certain things like that, but, and they've managed to do it. the, female enrollment in our department or our school is, pretty big these days. It keeps growing, so I can never keep track of how many females are in the program for sure, but there was at least the last I knew, at least 40 ish female students in the program. So they, and they like to get out and do sports and they like to get out and socialize and do other things also, so a lot of them are part of our, American Welding Society Student Chapter. And they get involved in doing community projects and so forth. and like I said earlier, they, do a lot of different things with, we'll have them do tours and we'll have them do different little projects for the community. And like they've built bike racks before for the school. They've, done different projects for different businesses and so on around the area here. So that's. That's pretty cool too. but yes, they are getting out there. They are being a part of student government and doing all that stuff too. So it's, it is pretty neat. 00:52:15 Sumer Beatty: I like to hear that your female numbers are up because I think that's probably grown even just since Erin's been here that we talked about earlier. So it's just those others in the past showing their story, telling their story like Erin did. Hopefully that inspired more women to think, Oh, I, I can do this. I'm not going to be the only female in the welding lab. There's others. 00:52:35 Mike Allen: A lot of the time, the females are better at TIG welding than the guys are, 00:52:39 Sumer Beatty: Do you find companies are more, or I shouldn't say more. Are they eager to hire women? is the diversity valuable to them? Are they, does that appeal to? 00:52:50 Mike Allen: Yep. 00:52:50 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:52:51 Mike Allen: I've, the one company that comes to mind is out of State College and they've hired a couple of our students and, they're part of the NDT, world, but, they've, They had no problem with that. And I don't think that any of the companies that come here have an issue with any of that kind of stuff. They're looking for whoever can produce, who can do the job, doesn't matter if it's male, female, so on, it's just, if you can do it, Come to work for us. 00:53:23 Sumer Beatty: And a lot of people are saying that a lot of businesses want these students. 00:53:27 Mike Allen: Yeah. Yeah That's for sure. We can't produce enough of them. 00:53:32 Sumer Beatty: So we didn't really talk much about you other than your past. What do you have going on? You said you were busy with projects. Are you anything fun to share any cool projects going on? 00:53:42 Mike Allen: I'm working right now at replacing a cab on a tanker truck for my father in law and That's taken up quite a bit of my time because it's, we had to go buy a new, another cab and fix it a little bit. So I had to weld patches in the floor and so on and so forth. And then we're going to put the wiring harness in and put it all back together and set it on the truck. And yeah, so I'm, busy. 00:54:10 Sumer Beatty: Do you have a lot of people coming to you knowing you can weld like, Oh, I got this project. Can you fix this? 00:54:16 Mike Allen: I used to, but I slowed that down a little bit. because it would take up the whole summer. 00:54:22 Sumer Beatty: You say no enough, people stop asking, right? 00:54:25 Mike Allen: Yes, yes. But I do some stuff, depending on what it is. 00:54:29 Sumer Beatty: I'm not trying to get you a side hustle here, I'm just curious. Sometimes when people learn you have a skill, then they just tend to ask. 00:54:37 Mike Allen: Yes, but like I said, little jobs I can handle. It's just, I don't want to get into anything that's gonna take up the rest of my, or the whole summer. 00:54:49 Sumer Beatty: Sure, yeah, you need to relax a little bit before things ramp up again. Has there, we could cut this if this isn't, I'm just curious, since the welding program is so full, has there ever been talk about having summer classes? 00:55:01 Mike Allen: Yes, we've been having discussions about changing our certificate program to a 10 month certificate program. Right now, it's a two year degree, just like the associate, which is pretty much back to back with the associate degree. 00:55:18 Sumer Beatty: Just math difference? 00:55:20 Mike Allen: There's, yes, gen, some of the gen ed stuff is different than what, all the hands-on stuff is the same. Both. Both ways. 00:55:27 Sumer Beatty: Got it. 00:55:29 Mike Allen: Yes. We've been talking about looking at changing up the certificate to make it 10 months and then those classes would more than likely be running in the summertime, also, just because that clears out the shop. We may end up running some of it during the rest of the year also, but we'd have summer classes running for that. We do all kinds of summer camps and everything else right now. out over there in that welding shop. And, we've been doing some, trainings for CTE instructors and so on and so forth. that takes up some time in the summer to, time also. So... 00:56:07 Sumer Beatty: That's nice to share those resources. And I love that we bring those middle school students and the high school students in for camps and let them see what's happening here too. The camps are a great opportunity if you are in high school and considering coming to Penn College because you can come and you can spend the night live in the dorms, pretend you're a real student for a short period of time, go to class, eat in our dining halls, do all the fun stuff. it's a great idea if you're thinking of coming here. 00:56:34 Mike Allen: Yeah. 00:56:34 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. And then welding has a summer camp. I'm assuming it's a connected to the engineering piece. 00:56:39 Mike Allen: Yes. 00:56:40 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:56:40 Mike Allen: Yeah. The whole engineering side of, they do welding, they do machining. They, there's a couple of different things they do throughout, I think it's three or four days. 00:56:49 Sumer Beatty: And that's really nice, too, because you're not locked into just exploring one thing. So you can get a taste of a bunch of different options. 00:56:57 Mike Allen: Yeah, when we first started doing it, we, we were doing some stuff through the FMA, which is, Fabricators Manufacturers Association. It's called Nuts and Bolts and Thingamajigs. So they, they help sponsor camps and so on. And that's what we, that's how we started doing a lot of it. But we, they had done an engineering camp prior to that too, but we got involved with those guys and then they, started giving some funding to do some stuff with it and so on. So it's built from, it's grown from there, 00:57:29 Carlos Ramos: Aside from the, summer camps, which, you're going to have limited number of seats to be able to participate in, there's a little bit of a, little bit more of a time investment for that. What else could a, high school student or, middle school student be thinking about to, prepare for, to determine if, this is a career path for them, an educational path for them? What's some advice you have for them? 00:57:53 Mike Allen: Whatever you can do with math prior to coming to this program or getting into any of these programs, whether it's here or somewhere else, there's a lot of math used in this industry, and a lot of students are behind the times with the math when they get here, and then hence the developmental math classes and so on. But my biggest piece of advice to them is to try to work their way through the math prior to coming here and getting, refreshing themselves on algebra, trig, whatever it may be in order to get through the math. Be able to get through this program or any of these programs without, failing something or having to take classes over and take seven math classes like I did when I came back here. That's why I that's why it's the biggest piece of my advice, because it's like. I know that it's hard, and, I started out 005 when I came back after 18 years of doing the real world stuff. And I was like, I haven't done algebra and trig in years. So I had to start there and work my way through it. So if you don't have to do that, that's what you want to do. 00:59:09 Carlos Ramos: Are there ways that they could approach math, actually a little bit more fun, that are a little bit more related to the work that they're going to need in welding? 00:59:18 Mike Allen: Yeah. Let's just say, for instance, if a student's messing around with AutoCAD, or SolidWorks, or any of those CAD programs. Those programs will actually do the math for you. And you're going to roll, a piece of metal and you're going to put end caps on it. And how many gallons of water will that cylinder hold? So stuff like that can be calculated in these programs prior to building something, so students that are playing with these CAD programs and so on. if they, get into these things and they actually make drawings like that or do stuff like that, that to me. is a big help for a student to teach. It gives them the general idea of, okay, why do we need this math for these traits. If you own your own company, and you have to, you get a contract to build, 25, tank trucks or whatever it may be, okay, how, do I go about figuring out how much water that'll hold or whatever, being? You have to know the basics of the math, obviously, but I feel if you can read a tape measure and you can do fractional measurements and so on, you're, getting, you're working your way into this industry. really well. Okay. But do I rely on the computer nowadays? Yes. And so does everybody else in the industry. And that's a lot of what I hear when the students come back or the alumni come back and say, Hey, we don't even do that anymore. why are you teaching them that? if you don't know the background behind some of this stuff. Why do we do, how does it get done? It's just in some of the blueprint classes, we'll teach them how to, lay out a template and it's math, obviously, right? So if you can't figure out fractional measurements or, add and subtract things like that, you can't do that. But that's the heartbeat behind being able to fabricate something. So if you can't.. 01:01:39 Carlos Ramos: So maybe find that interesting problem and maybe back your way into the solution, even if you don't know the basics behind it, maybe that's your pathway into the basics to say, okay, I need to know what 9 16ths is and how to add another 9 16ths to that or whatever it is you need to do. Yeah. 01:01:56 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, everybody wants to find the why. They want purpose. Like, why am I doing this? Tell me how I'm going to use this. From high school up, it never ends. 01:02:04 Mike Allen: I often said that myself, too. 01:02:07 Sumer Beatty: Just like those students that come back from their internships and tell you, yes, I see why you had me learn this. 01:02:14 Mike Allen: Yeah. 01:02:15 Sumer Beatty: Do you have any mentors who helped you along the way? Knowing you are a mentor to many students, is there anybody that sticks out to you that you'd like to talk about? 01:02:26 Mike Allen: I, the mentors that I had for this industry are all the teachers that were, all the instructors that were here when I was here to start with. Bob Vaughn, Jim Fox, Dave Dietrich, all those guys, Paul Schreiner, all those guys were mentors. At home I had, my uncle who was a mentor for the welding side of things and my grandfather too. Yeah, I learned a lot about a lot of things on the farm. So you can weld, you can fix engines, you can do all this stuff. So that's what my background was growing up, Yeah. 01:03:08 Sumer Beatty: And did the impact of those individuals influence you in any way to move from industry into teaching? 01:03:15 Mike Allen: When I was in the pipefitters union, I got laid off. So the idea was for me to come back and get my associate degree so that I could go and actually teach welding classes at the Union Hall and that kind of stuff. So I started that. Of course, I had been laid off for a year and when I came here, obviously I knew everybody that was teaching here. And, they started saying, Hey, you need to, teach part time. I'm like, I don't know if I'm the right guy for that, So they're like, yeah, we'll give you a, an automotive welding class where you just teach a MIG welding and spot welding and stuff. It's okay. So it was a pre canned. class, the curriculum is all ready to go. And so I did it and I was like, Hey, this isn't too bad. I don't mind messing around with the students doing this kind of stuff. And, the next semester, Mr. Nau comes to me and he goes, Hey, he says, we're going to have you teach a, an actual welding class for the TIG welding. Cause it was one of my favorite processes. I'm like, Okay, so I got into teaching that way, and as I'm going there, they're prodding me, or they're pushing me to do the four year degree and this and that. By the time you're done with the four year degrees, we're going to have some retirements coming up. I'm like, okay. I ended up doing the four year. I got hired after I got my associate's degree basically finished and then I worked my way through the four year and I've been doing this what 17 years now? So the basic reason was for me to get into this industry was the fact that I wasn't on the road anymore and I had the kids that I could be with and so on at home, and the wife was a much happier too, 01:05:25 Sumer Beatty: That matters. 01:05:26 Mike Allen: So yeah, so that was how I ended up coming into the industry as far as teaching goes. 01:05:31 Sumer Beatty: Oh, that's nice. They saw something in you from a very early, period. 01:05:35 Mike Allen: Yeah, I guess. I don't know if it was good or bad. But yeah, so anyhow, I ended up teaching all the TIG welding classes. not all of them, but TIG and stick welding and most of the, those classes is what I ended up teaching to start with. So now I'm doing blueprint classes and CNC classes and fabrication and everything else. So I don't teach the welding classes so much anymore, but I may go back to that. We'll see. 01:06:04 Sumer Beatty: Keep your options open. 01:06:05 Mike Allen: That's right. 01:06:05 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. Did you have any parting takeaways for us? Anything you'd like for our listeners to... 01:06:12 Mike Allen: I'd like to say to the students or the alums to, to work hard. And, prove yourself to whoever you're working with and then just take time to relax and enjoy your life. 01:06:25 Sumer Beatty: That's a good advice. Thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate it. 01:06:29 Mike Allen: I enjoyed being here. It was very fun. Thank you. for having me. 01:06:33 Carlos Ramos: Thanks, Mike. 01:06:33 Sumer Beatty: Absolutely. Thanks for hanging out with us today. 01:06:39 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. 01:06:43 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mentioned in today's episode. 01:06:49 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on deck for upcoming ones at pct.edu/podcast. 01:06:56 Sumer Beatty: And of course. We are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 01:07:05 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 01:07:06 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time. I don't know how to describe that sound, but it is not good.