Thanks to a bustling construction industry and the red-hot movie market, Atlanta is a town in need of welders. Ryan Blythe saw the need and stepped in to fill it, founding the Georgia Trade School seven years ago with just seven students.
Today, the roster of graduates tops 700. The Cobb Chamber of Commerce has named the school one of the top 25 small businesses in the county for the last three years, and Blythe has twice been nominated as a Metro Atlanta Chamber Small Business Person of the Year.
But in 2011, the idea of having a trade school in the suburbs seemed absurd.
“It hadn’t been done, but I knew it could work,” said Blythe, who launched the school with colleagues from a defunct welding school in Atlanta where he had been director of student affairs. “After the recession, so many kids were struggling to find jobs with their college degrees, and we made the case to as many perspective students as possible that when you come out of our program, you have a skill for life.”
In 2017, after more than five years in Kennesaw, the school moved to an historic 1920s mill building in downtown Acworth.
“It allowed us to double our capacity,” said Blythe. “We were teaching about 100 students a year; now, we can teach 200 or more.”
About 60 percent of those students are from Georgia, said Blythe. “We have strong relationships with the high schools across metro Atlanta, and especially Cobb and Cherokee. But we do get students from other states – New York, California, Texas.”
Students can master various welding skills in 14, 40-hour weeks or in six months if they attend part time. The techniques are taught with hands-on instruction.
“About 80 percent of the time, they’re welding,” said Blythe. “We’re teach pipe welding and structural welding to the American Welding Society’s industry standards. We also certify welders in our program, which a lot of other schools don’t offer. That gives students a lot of options for the industries and jobs they can go into. The joke in our industry is ‘the more you burn, the more you learn, and more you learn, the more you earn.’”
The average graduate can expect a starting salary in the low $50,000s, said Blythe.
“Our average welder in the U.S. now is 56 years old,” he said. “The average age of our students is 19, which is what the industry needs. The national shortage of welders is expected to hit 400,000 in 2024. We’ve even seen that in Georgia that we don’t have the workforce we need.”
Graduates have gone on to work on the Mercedes-Benz stadium, SunTrust Park and the Battery, and the Aria planned community in Dunwoody. They’ve also found jobs in the film and television industry working on sets from “Stranger Things,” “Fast and Furious” and “Godzilla.”
Cassandra Wilson was drawn to the Trade School for its reputation for putting graduates to work.
“I wanted to do furniture design, and I realized welding would work well with that,” said the Kennesaw resident who finished the course a few years ago. “But I also knew Georgia Trade School was really good at getting people jobs. I have been working on sets. On ‘Fast and Furious 8,’ ‘Daytime Divas’ and ‘Stranger Things.’ I’ve welded everything from prison sets, cages and labs to small things like hinges and shelves.”
The $10,000 course at Georgia Trade School has paid off, said Wilson. “You learn a skill and you make so many good connections that some people landed jobs even before they graduated. And we’re lucky it’s offered: Back in the day, you had to get an apprenticeship if you could find someone willing to teach you.”
Blythe sees the school as doing more than just teaching a skill.
“We’ve trained 700 kids who didn’t want to pursue office jobs, even though some of them had already gotten a college degree,” he said. “We’re really changing lives.”
Information about the Georgia Trade School is online at georgiatradeschool.com.
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Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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