Cincinnati State to host welding Open House at Harrison campus

August 13, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 13, 2015

CONTACT
Robert White
Media Relations/Communications Coordinator
(513) 569-4775 (office)
(859) 468-6640 (cell)
robert.white@cincinnatistate.edu

Cincinnati State to host welding Open House at Harrison campus

Aug. 15 Event includes free cookout, demonstrations of virtual welding station

Cincinnati State will host an Open House and Community Cookout at its Harrison Campus from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15 to promote its recently-expanded welding program.
Faculty and staff from the welding program will be on hand to display the new welding labs and air handling equipment at the Harrison campus, at 10030 West Road (45030). Also featured will be demonstrations of the college’s “virtual’’ welding station, which allows students to get a feel for how to use and manipulate various types of welding processes and develop the necessary muscle memory before going into an actual lab and encountering the extreme temperatures and other real-world conditions associated with such work.
“We just want to give people a sense of what our programs are all about,” said Tom Sumerix, lead instructor for the Cincinnati State welding program. “There’s a tremendous demand for jobs in this field, and the pay in many instances is exceptional.”
He noted that the aerospace, construction, pipeline and automotive industries are among those with a high demand for trained, certified welders.
Cincinnati State offers both short-term certificate programs and two-year associate degree programs in welding, and recently won a U.S. Department of Labor grant to expand such programs. All of the College’s technical welding courses are housed at the Harrison campus.
Sumerix said the Cincinnati State welding programs are distinctive in several respects:

They are SENSE-accredited by the American Welding Society (AWS), and Cincinnati State is working toward becoming an accredited testing facility (ATF). This will allow Cincinnati State to give its students AWS welding certifications on site as well as serve local business and industry by qualifying their welders.
A co-op requirement is part of the associate’s degree program. This, Sumerix said, will give students an advantage over peers who study welding at most traditional trade schools, since a successful co-op placement not only enhances skills by providing actual hands-on job training experience and brings in wages, it often opens the door to employment offers upon graduation.
The welding lab is brand new, and equipped to allow students to practice: Shielded metal arc welding, Gas metal arc welding, Flux cored arc welding, Gas tungsten arc welding, and Oxy-acetylene welding/cutting and metal fabrication.
Students will have the opportunity to earn either a certificate or an associate degree in welding technology, along with American Welding Society SENSE qualifications, at a significantly lower cost than many other welding trade schools.

For more information about the Cincinnati State welding programs, please visit the Center for Innovative Technologies pages at www.cincinnatistate.edu.
ABOUT CINCINNATI STATE
Cincinnati State (www.cincinnatistate.edu) enrolls about 10,500 students and offers more than 130 associate degree and certificate programs in business technologies, health and public safety, engineering technologies, humanities and sciences and information technologies. Cincinnati State has one of the most comprehensive co-op programs among two-year colleges in the U.S.

-30-