The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLSR) is more than a month of bull riding competitions and musical entertainment. The HLSR also supports education and new careers as Lone Star College-Cypress Center’s future welder Curtis Butler can attest to this spring.
Butler received $3,500 as part of the HLSR’s Vocational Scholarship Program and partnership with LSC to support non-traditional students in pursuit of an associate degree or certificate in a technical field.
“The HLSR Scholarship will help me further my education and help me succeed in my plan to become a professional welder,” said Butler, a father of three with a fourth child due in March. “My career goal is to have my own business so I can take care of my family and give them a better life.”
Butler’s always been interested in welding, but that dream didn’t begin until two years after he became a victim of a tragic hit and run motorcycle accident in May 2016. Due to a shattered left ankle, crushed right foot and a tibia broken in half, Butler was told he would never be able to walk or work as a semi-truck driver again.
“But I did not want my life to end this way. I pushed myself to walk again and I found the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do. And that was to be a welder,” said Butler. “Welding is a form of art to me, like gifted hands that can make a piece of steel connect together. What drew me to LSC-Cypress Center’s program was the challenge and my ambition to weld.”
The HLSR scholarship will help him graduate in the fall with an Associate of Applied Science degree in Welding Technology Specialization along with TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas), MIG (Metal Inert Gas) and stick welding certifications.
“Our program is designed to push our students out of their comfort zone and challenges them to learn from their mistakes,” said Welding Professor Kristoffer Villarreal. “Through this, Curtis has learned to self-critique and derive the high standards he and other students place on themselves to be the best they can be while in the learning environment.”
The skills and knowledge students gain at LSC-Cypress Center is the tip of the iceberg as mastery takes years, Villarreal said. However, taking advantage of the program’s hands-on learning environment and developing one’s skill through repetition and dedication to the process, will give Butler and his classmates the freedom to enter the manufacturing field or work for themselves.
“Either way, the skills they take with them are skills that have stood the test of time and will be in high demand till the end of time,” said Villarreal. “Curtis is a family man who sees the impact and value that having such an education has for his future and that of his family’s.”
For information on LSC-Cypress Center’s Welding Technology program, contact Director of the Advanced Manufacturing Center Michael Young at Michael.L.Young@LoneStar.edu.