By Chris Cox

Technology centers, like Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee and Seminole, offer students the opportunity to learn skills that they can use in their future careers. This can give students a leg-up once they enter the workforce. 

Strother High School junior Joseph Mason is getting those skills right now in the Electrical Careers program at GCTC and he is putting those skills to good use. He and his FFA teammates recently won the electricity competition at a recent FFA competition at Seminole State University. He also finished third in the individual competition. 

Gordon Cooper Technology Center’s Electrical Career’s program boasts that its graduates are prepared for an entry-level electrician job in residential, commercial or industrial employment or for positions in sales or warehouse shipping and receiving of electrical parts. Like their other programs, the Electrical Careers program has a course structure that covers a wide variety of courses to best prepare students for their potential career in the electrical industry. Some of the courses students will take are electrical theory, practical shop experience and on-the-job training. 

GCTC’s Electrical Careers instructor Darrell Frerichs says that Mason, and his Strother FFA classmate Travis Woolsey, are both at the top of the class at GCTC and are planning to become electricians following their graduation, something he believes they will both succeed at.

It appears that Mason is on his way to achieving that goal of becoming an electrician. The hours spent at Gordon Cooper in Electrical Trades will count hour for hour toward the apprenticeship needed to qualify to become a journeyman electrician.

“As an electrical instructor, electrical contractor and business owner, these young men are what we need wiring our homes and businesses,” Frerichs says.

For more information about Gordon Cooper Technology Center and the programs that they offer visit gctech.edu.