CAMPAIGN TO DISCREDIT TSC-A&M WELDING TRAINING TRACED TO DISGRUNTLED ITECC EMPLOYEES AND LOCAL BLOGGERS

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

A month-old social media campaign to discredit a Texas Southmost College-Texas A&M welding program has been traced to a group which tried and failed to replace the community college through a  lucrative Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with the Brownsville Independent School District which would have cost the district $5,000 per student for a 10-month contract compared to the $975 course offered by the college.

The same instruction – offered to local residents by A &M through its Rio Grande Valley Advanced Manufacturing Hub MOU with TSC and other providers – is totally free of charge. A & M also sponsors the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) exam necessary to work in places like the Port of Brownsville. 

The free instruction in the trades – like welding, occupational health and safety, cybersecurity, and heavy equipment operation, among others – was made available to students at TSC, Texas State Technical College, and  students from throughout South Texas by MOUs negotiated through the A&M Board of Regents and its Engineering Extension Service. 

Key players in providing this free, certified instruction to local students were Brownsville native and A&M regent Mike Hernandez and the TSC board members, mainly TSC Board President Adela Garza.

"We have the facility and state-of-the-art equipment which no one else has," said TSC board president Garza. "A & M provides its sponsorship and technical expertise. And it costs students nothing."        

The group seeking to replace TSC's in its MOU with the BISD formed the STX Metal Trades Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) and registered it with the Texas Secretary of State July 3, 2023. It lists a Malene Martinez with an address at 7832 Palma de Micharos as its managing member. 

The proposed MOU (at right) submitted by STX to the BISD  was to run from August 2023 through June 2024 to replace TSC to provide the instruction was rejected by the school district and was never placed on the school board's agenda. (Was it mere coincidence that the  entire wording of the proposed STX Metals MOU was an exact duplicate of the TSC-BISD proposal?) 

"How could you compare the $975 fee charged by TSC, or completely free through A&M's Manufacturing Hub, to the $5,000 per student proposed by STX Metal Trades?," asked a BISD administrator. "The company had just been formed and had no track record. It just made no sense." The $975 tuition fee charged by TSC includes an $80 fee for the American Welding Society examination. The A&M Hub sponsorship includes this examination free of charge. 

But this fact din't deter local blogger Jerry McHale of the McHale Report blog and Iowa-based Jim Barton of the Brownsville Observer, from alleging that the TSC-Texas A&M  welding program was a failure, that the TSC board of trustees should be fired, and that Dr. Jesus Rodriguez, the college president, was "crooked."

The bloggers also charged that the college promised the students, aside from providing them with a certificate of course completion, certification by the American Welding Society.

Barton, for example, wrote that the students "were promised American Welding Society certificates if they passed the test, but, instead were only given a "worthless" Texas Southmost College Certificate of Completion."

However, this indicates an abysmal lack of knowledge of the instructional process, said a TSC administrator. Neither TSC nor A&M administers AWS certification or conducts its exam. That exam is administered by Matt Richards, a AWS certified inspector who has been on the TSC staff in that role since May 2021. 

Passing the AWS exam depends on the students' abilities after they have undergone the training and received a certificate of completion of the welding courses either from their high school or any other vocational training institution. 

Before Richards' arrival, there was no place – or a certified AWS inspector in Cameron County – to administer the AWS exam. TSC became an Education Institution Member with an authorized AWS testing facility on February 2022, the only one in Cameron County.

     

The charges in the two blogs – albeit equivocal and replete with  "reportedly,"allegedly," and other
hedged assertions attributed to shadowy, unidentified sources – seek to discredit the college and its board and its president. 

And they specifically single out Thomas Tynan, TSC's  Director Construction and Manufacturing Workforce Training and Continuing Education at the college's International Technology, Education and Commerce Center (ITECC).

A secret  recording of Tynan – whose brash and voluble personality often grates on listeners – was made by former adjunct (part-time) instructors Jason and Anthony Medina who are no longer with the college. In it, Tynan is heard brashly trashing the TSC board and advocating getting rid of them and saying he would rather deal with "crooked" TSC president Rodriguez. 

(As part of their employment with TSC, the Medinas also recruited students to ITECC, which apparently led them to plan the proposal of selling the welding instruction services to BISD themselves through STX Metal Trades)

Jason Medina is said to have brought the proposed – and rejected – MOU to the BISD. When the proposal was turned down, the campaign through the bloggers and social media to discredit TSC and A&M's welding program began in earnest. 

Among the charges made by Barton and amplified by McHale, is that the welding stations at TSC are empty. (Did anyone tell them that then former classes have left and that the new classes for this semester start September 25?)

TSC records indicate that during the last year TSC issued certificates of completion to approximately 250 students and has another 31 are enrolled to begin training with classes starting this September 25. This includes dual enrollment students of the BISD who are going through the district's Career and Technical Education (CTE) Program. TSC is also listed as a certified accredited training center with the National Center for Construction Education and Research. (NCCER).

 An A&M spokesman said that in the two years since the school's engineering department and extension service has been in South Texas it has provided certification and free instruction to 11,496 students in the various trades including fundamental, maritime and orbital welding, workplace safety, cyber security, process improvement, quality management systems, robotics, etc., and just added AC/DC electrical systems. Additionally, participants in the training  programs are not required to have a high-school diploma or U.S. citizenship.

TSC records indicate that thus far, A&M has sponsored 19 orbital tube welding students and 29 fundamental welding students. 

Administrators say that when a new student arrives at TSC, he or she is given a basic "fill it" weld on a flat iron table, and an inspector goes one-on-one with the applicants to determine their level skills. Then, after they complete their curriculum, they are given a more rigorous industry standard V-Groove Uphill 3G, and later overhead 4G, preparing them for the examination required for AWS certification. Passing it opens the door to good-paying welding jobs, but it depends on the students' abilities to pass  the rigorous exam.

More advanced welding classes offered are in orbital welding, which is used in the machine building industry, electronics and aeronautics. Laser welding classes which is used in the aerospace industry and the manufacture of computer chips are also in the offing at TSC's ITECC.

Given this documented success by TSC and A&M – which has just announced it has set aside another $5 million to sponsor students in the trades at TSC and in South Texas –  will the unfounded social media efforts to discredit the performance of these two institutions to provide local students a trade continue in social media? 

And more importantly, perhaps, why are they doing this disservice and who stands to benefit from their efforts? It's certainly not the students.