Worland CTE students exchange signs for SkillsUSA funds

A partnership between Brian Aagard's SkillsUSA team and Bryan Barthelmess of McGarvin-Moberly has resulted in mutual benefit; McGarvin-Moberly has received two brand new signs, and Aagard's team will receive a donation toward their SkillsUSA program.

Aagard said, "The money that is going to be donated is going into our SkillsUSA club account to help fund our program going forward. If we get to go to nationals, it will help so that the student that qualifies won't have to foot the cost of attending the competition. It just helps out, all the way around."

As for how the partnership came about, Barthelmess was at the school giving a presentation when he by chance saw another sign Aagard's welding class had made for Paintrock Processing.

Barthelmess said, "For the last five years, I've been involved in an organization which is part of the Associated General Contractors of Wyoming. One of our biggest priorities is to expose kids to construction and the trades. So I started doing presentations to the classes about five years ago, and developed a great partnership at the high school. As we were doing our presentation this year, we had gone into Brian Aagard's welding class and he showed us a sign that they had done. We asked him if it would be a possibility to put together a similar sign for his workplace, McGarvin-Moberly, because we were looking for new signs for their buildings. We started talking about it, I emailed Brian our logo and it went from there."

Aagard said that over the course of several days in class, his students completed two signs for McGarvin-Moberly. He said, "My CAD (computer-aided drafting) class are the ones who started the design process on them, and my Skills team cut them out and cleaned them up and painted them."

Barthelmess said of the signs, "They turned out awesome. They've got a bit of a creative touch to them, while still holding true to the original logo we've had for 60 years."

Outspoken on the importance of introducing trades to students, Barthelmess was happy to share about his experience in working with Worland High School students.

He said, "SkillsUSA is another organization whose goal is to promote the trades, and we understand that as a construction company; but also as consumers, we need to understand that our future is in young people, and SkillsUSA is another organization that is really promoting young people getting involved in the trades and those kinds of things. Even if it's not a trade 'job' necessarily, even if a kid doesn't go on to work as a welder, if they spend time welding in high school, or spend time doing plumbing, electrical, whatever in high school, those are skills that translate well to home ownership and all kinds of things. It's a huge asset, and it's great to have high schoolers involved in that program. To be able to help that in any way, to send our kids and get them exposure like that, it's huge."

Barthelmess said that the partnership between his workplace and the high school is an uncommon one, and that he doesn't take that for granted. He said, "The partnership with the high school that we have in Worland, and being welcomed into the classroom to be able to talk to kids about employment opportunities, and opportunities that are available in the trades, is not something that's normal. Even other places in the state are reluctant to let anybody talking about the trades into their school. So, it's really cool to see what we have here, and I'm excited to be a part of it."

He closed by wishing SkillsUSA students the best in future competitions, saying, "With the success that they've had this year, it will only get bigger."