Katie Jones worked as a bartender, considered a career in cosmetology and went to college briefly for nursing.
Today, the 24-year-old Newport News resident works as a certified welder for Howmet Aerospace in Hampton thanks to the education she received from Tidewater Community College’s Skilled Trades Academy in Portsmouth.
“I never in a million years thought I’d become a welder,” Jones said of the male-dominated industry. “I fell in love with it, and it’s changed my entire life 110%.”
On Wednesday, the academy celebrated an expansion that will enable it to train more than 1,800 students to help meet the need for skilled trade workers in Hampton Roads. TCC describes it as one of the largest trade academies run by a community college on the East Coast.
The academy opened in 2019 in a 20,000-square-foot off-campus commercial space on Airline Boulevard that had the capacity to train 979 students. The space once occupied a distribution center for The Virginian-Pilot. The expansion added another 12,000 square feet and the capacity to train another 844 students.