Sandra Gomez grew up admiring her grandfather’s skill with metal. He created designs, installed railings, fences and she watched hoping to one day learn even though she didn’t see any women in her family follow in his footsteps.
“I was always drawn to metal,” she said.
Gomez, 32, is now one of 118 students in the Welding Technology Program at Palo Alto College, on San Antonio’s South Side. She spends most of her weekdays alternating between her own courses in the associate degree pathway and volunteering to help most of the other welding students.
“I feel like that’s what I’m here for, to guide them and to show that it’s not just about books… it’s about the passion and the expression that goes into it,” Gomez said. “Never, ever, did I think that I would end up in an instructor position in my life.”
Today, Gomez is a couple of months away from graduating with the associate of applied sciences in welding and has talked to Palo Alto officials about staying as an instructor.
The Palo Alto welding program doubled in size over the summer after an investment of over $1 million that added 20 new welding booths, fully equipped for the hands-on program, for a total of 46 booths.
This program needs little to no marketing, officials said. Even after the expansion, word of mouth helped fill all available seats across seven different classes, which include Welding Safety, Welding Symbols and Blueprints and Welding Techniques.
The program advertises welding machine operator as a career pathway, with an average annual salary between $43,000 and $68,000.
Program officials estimate there are nearly 300 jobs available locally in areas that include construction, manufacturing, transportation and more.
This fall, Palo Alto College officials reported a total student enrollment of more than 15,400 individuals, up from about 12,400 last fall.
About 80% of PAC students also attend on a part-time basis. Like Gomez — who is working a part-time job at a restaurant and raising three children — most of these students work and help support their families.
“I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I’m doing it,” Gomez said. “I take it day by day.”
Teaching beyond the skill
On a recent Tuesday morning, welding instructor and program lead Yves Fanfelle’s first class of the day filled up with about 21 students. He kicked-off by asking what he considers the most important question of his class: “How would you rate welding so far from 1-10?”
One by one, the students voiced mostly eights, nines and even one six.
“What I’m doing is aligning,” Fanfelle said. “I’m not aligning with the class, I’m aligning with every single student because if one of them said four, I would ask him to stay and I got to get him to a seven.”
These students were entering week five of an eight-week course. The program offers two certificate levels with level one requiring 31 credits and the second level 45 credits. These are considered stackable, meaning some of the courses taken for the level-one certificate also count towards level-two. The same is true for the associate degree, which requires a total of 60 hours to complete.
Two instructors, Fanfelle and Steve Hoenes, are leading the courses, with the help of several students like Gomez.
The community college is currently seeking more instructors to keep up with the current growth and to prepare for another significant bump in enrollment with the upcoming construction of a $65 million Center of Applied Technology at Brooks, which was approved through the 2025 bond.
With 42 years of experience as a welder, operations manager and quality control officer, Fanfelle is looking for a specific kind of instructor, one that goes beyond teaching the expected techniques, like he strives to do in every class.
“I’m not saying I’m magical, but just show some passion, care about the kids,” he said. “We are on the South Side. You want to show that you care? Get them a job.”
That Tuesday morning, he selected one half of his classroom for another activity before going to the welding lab; public speaking.
He directed his students to step in front of their classmates, introduce themselves, tell them what welding technique is their favorite so far and open up the floor for questions.
“I want to see the tops of your heads, right?… We don’t look at ceilings, we don’t look at the ground, we look at the plugs in the back of the room,” Fanfelle tells the class. “Keep your hands still, keep them behind you or in front of you.”
He followed that with the 20 points to land, maintain and succeed at any job, which Gomez helped him read out loud to the class: Attendance, punctuality, safety, cleanliness, communication, and more.
These are like his Ten Commandments, as he assures his students that if they practice them, they will be first in line for employment and promotions.
“At school, we are training out. Out there, you can’t be trained anymore,” he tells the class. “You got to wear your safety glasses. You got to wear your (personal protective equipment)… Keep your area clean. What does that show? That I got respect.”
He wants these students to think beyond landing a job, he said, and think about how to grow within that company or that project to eventually oversee a project or a team. Hourly wages and working nonstop to make more money should not be the only goal, he said he encourages them to think about their quality of life.
Some of his students already held welding jobs. That Tuesday morning, Fanfelle told the class about a peer who had just returned from what they call a “man camp,” staying with a team of mostly men out in the oilfields five to six days a week fixing equipment.
“It was horrible. He said his room was only 4-foot-by-7-foot,” Fanfelle said. “I had him talk to the class.”
Fanfelle takes a pause as his voice breaks and his eyes fill with tears when asked who is the traditional student that walks through his door at Palo Alto College.
He describes students from working-class families, most are financially contributing to their household or have families of their own, he said, and they don’t always see themselves or their situation reflected in traditional college paths.
At least half of the individuals enrolled at Palo Alto College in 2024 were first-time college students and considered economically disadvantaged.
“A lot of these students have been beaten down. There’s horror stories,” Fanfelle said. “You have that hardworking student who’s got to leave by 2 or 3 p.m. to go lay sheetrock with his dad. His dad doesn’t care about school… So I have to be really flexible with them. But they come back and give me extra hours.”
The San Antonio Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
