Allan Hancock College’s welding shop boasts cold metal tables, concrete floors, intimidating equipment, and scraps of steel. Even a brief visit is enough to reveal: Welding is a dirty job. It’s not a getting-paint-on-your-fingers or getting-clay-on-your-hands kind of dirty, but a blue-collar, middle-class America dirty found in a Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen song.
Hancock’s welding instructor and head of industrial technology, Rayvell Snowden, wanted to increase the program’s dwindling enrollment numbers, so, like a gardener coaxing a flower from the soil, he turned 180 degrees from the dirty and began demonstrating the beauty that can come from welding.
His theory: If he could show people what they could create if they had the skills, they would come.
Shortly after he began his endeavor, the people did come. Snowden started with an ornamental iron class showing students how to create gates, fences, and flowerpot stands. They learned how to cut and shape their projects, but Snowden or an instructional assistant had to weld the final product, creating a long line of students waiting their turn. So he created another class to give students enough welding experience to allow them to put together their pieces.
Then Snowden recruited an instructor to teach a blacksmithing class. Then he recruited a welder-artist to teach a metal sculpture class. The result was exactly what Snowden had hoped for: an incredible increase in students.
“We added a hundred students a semester to our classes that we wouldn’t otherwise have had,” he said.
Many of his students are creating beauty by twisting metal, and Snowden emphasized that the program teaches art.
Still, Snowden is frank about welding’s possibilities. At the start of every new class, he asks the students where they would look if they wanted to get a welding job. Most of the answers are common: a welding shop, of course, or on a farm.
Then Snowden points out what isn’t obvious. What about the toilet tissue factory? They have machines there, and anywhere there are steel machines, there are maintenance workers.
“We touch everybody’s life in one way or another,” he said. “Even the jewelry you wear. We touch that.”
He encourages students to be versatile in where their money comes from when they finish their welding courses.
The college offers 18 or so welding classes, about a dozen of which make up the core program. Seven of those courses involve decorative metal. Participants go on to work in shops, go into business for themselves, work machine maintenance and repair jobs, or create art found in many Central Coast exhibitions.
Snowden learned how to weld while in the Navy. After leaving the service, he went on to work as a welder. After years at the job, however, he could feel the strain on his back and neck and knew he couldn’t do it forever, so he gave school another shot. Ultimately, he received a bachelor’s degree and, later, a master’s degree.
He joined Allan Hancock College in 1982, and when his students tell him they can’t handle their workload, Snowden draws on his own efforts to finish college to prove to them they can. So far, he’s touched the lives of about 5,000 students—and recently won the 2009 California Community College Association for Occupational Education Excellence in Teaching award.
Anne Cremarosa, dean of academic affairs at Hancock, nominated Snowden for the award. She said Snowden is well respected within the industry and credited the college’s strong welding reputation to the instructor.
He also has a reputation as being well-liked by the students.
“I can’t think of any of the students that he’s had or been around that haven’t just loved him,” said Harold Collins, a Hancock part-time instructor and former student of Snowden’s.
The man himself gives a lot of credit back to the students, saying he simply provides the skills.
“We just want to light the fire, and it will go where it goes,” he said. “We give the student the opportunity to learn and experiment.” m
Arts Editor Shelly Cone can join two pieces of metal with her mind. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 2-9, 2009.
