Welding has been a job hotspot for a while now, and it’s only been getting hotter. That’s showing up at WyoTech, where its 9-month program with 58 welding seats already has a waiting list that stretches to next April.
“That includes a night class, where students are going from 4:30 p.m. until about 2 a.m. in the morning,” WyoTech President Kyle Morris told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s almost completely booked out.”
Welding’s not the only hot trade program at WyoTech that’s been filling up fast lately. The outsized demand for WyoTech’s career and technical programs is fueling yet another huge expansion at the trade school, which just added 90,000 square feet in 2022.
The latest expansion will add 137,000 square feet to the existing 300,000-square-foot facility, at a cost of $42.8 million, making room for more welding classes, as well as more space for advanced diesel, heavy diesel, and the trim and upholstery program. Wyoming’s State Land and Investment Board has approved a $5 million Business Ready Community Grant and a $5 million loan to support the project.
There just doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for how big WyoTech, which is headquartered in Laramie, can get — but the latest growth spurt is all about what the school is seeing from the marketplace.
“The demand for the trades both from a student perspective and from an employment perspective is very large right now,” Morris told Cowboy State Daily. “We know that from a kind of state of the country perspective right now, but we also see it firsthand.”
That doesn’t only include the lengthening wait lists for career programs at WyoTech, but it’s also the way employers are flocking to fill up the school’s quarterly job fairs.
“We have space for about 100 employers at those and they are being filled up in a day, to basically over capacity,” Morris said. “So, our industry partnerships are showing us that demand is super strong.”
The new facility will add space for between 400 to 700 more students, bringing the new total to about 1,800 enrollments at any one time.
Welding programs, in particular, will gain a whopping 142 new seats, bringing that program space from 58 students to 200.
Jim Mathes, center, owner of WyoTech in Laramie, talks with students and alumni at one of its many job fairs. Most of WyoTech's students are Generation Z, which is earning itself a new moniker as the Toolbelt Generation. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
(Courtesy WyoTech) 
(Courtesy WyoTech) 
Some WyoTech automotive students get to bring their own project cars to work on. (Courtesy WyoTech) 
Students at WyoTech get to experience hands-on work on real rigs. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
(Courtesy WyoTech) 
(Courtesy WyoTech)
Comeback Time
WyoTech has made a huge comeback in recent years after almost having to shut its doors. The comeback is thanks to one of its former students, Jim Mathis, who worked his way up to becoming an administrator at the school before it had been sold off to a new company.
Mathis didn’t particularly like the new company, so he quit and made a career of turning around struggling career and technical schools.
That positioned him well for what came next — turning his old alma mater around and saving it from the brink of oblivion.
Mathis bought the school back in 2018. He felt like he had one more turnaround left in him before retirement, and because of the role the school had once played in turning his own life around, he knew that his last effort had to be WyoTech.
“I hated high school,” Mathis has told Cowboy State Daily in past interviews. “WyoTech changed my life because of how they did it. I needed the structure. I needed good teachers with high standards and principals telling me, ‘No Jim, you’re not going to do that. You have to be here at 7 o’clock in the morning, or you’re going to flunk out.’”
The Wyoming Legislature helped Mathis with a $5 million loan, leaving Mathis to raise the remaining $7 million he needed on top of that.
At the time, Mathis recalled walking into a ghost school that was only a shadow of what it had been. At peak, Mathis recalled the school having almost 2,200 students. But the day Mathis walked back through the doors, there were just 12 students and 12 employees left.
“It was like a baby and a battleship,” Mathis said. “I mean there was nobody around. I thought, ‘This is crazy. I’ve never had anything that small.’”
Mathis spent millions on marketing, changing the school’s story around from near catastrophe to new success. Within two years, the school had returned to profitability, and the state loan was well on its way to being completely paid off.
The WyoTech campus in Laramie, Wyoming, has expanded and upgraded significantly over the last decade. (Courtesy WyoTech) 
The WyoTech campus in Laramie, Wyoming, has expanded and upgraded significantly over the last decade. (Courtesy WyoTech) 
The WyoTech campus in Laramie, Wyoming, includes modern dorm facilities for students, who seek out the school from across the country. (Courtesy WyoTech)
Growth Spurt
WyoTech’s latest expansion isn’t the end of the school’s growth spurt, Morris told Cowboy State Daily.
“Our goal is definitely to continue expanding, to continue growing,” he said. “Our vision at WyoTech is just three simple things. Best training, best experience, best outcomes. And so long as we can maintain those things and the demand is out there, we want to grow to fill that demand and provide good training and good costumes for these students.”
WyoTech already has plenty of growing room, Morris added.
“The location where this building is being designed is on 70 acres that’s directly across from our current training facilities,” he said. “So we’ve got a master plan that continues that growth and expansion. We’ll need some housing over there eventually, to continue expanding out our current programs.”
WyoTech has already gained national prominence and brings in many students from across America.
“Only 7% of our students are coming from the state of Wyoming,” Morris said. “So we plan to continue that reach.”
Ashley Chitwood, marketing director at WyoTech, said the school’s overall vision is to be America’s destination trade school in Laramie, Wyoming.
“We’re telling America that this is the new form of education,” she said. “It’s quick training, it’s focused training. And we’re offering student life. We have housing so that we can still offer a form of a college experience in a way that’s financially responsible to those who are attending our program.”
The employer partnerships at WyoTech, likewise, come from all over the United States and include some of the best that industry has to offer. It includes companies like Halliburton, Penske, Toyota, Duncan Aviation, and many others.
These are companies that don’t think twice about landing a private jet that can fly WyoTech students back for a day trip to tour their companies, before flying them back home the same day in time for dinner that night.
The companies have also donated substantial amounts of equipment back to WyoTech, to help develop the hands-on trade programs. In fact, some companies have even built entire programs around sponsoring children of their employees to attend WyoTech.
All of that’s helping to build a nationally prominent resource in Wyoming that’s still on a big growth curve. One that can also help play a role in developing a young workforce that in some cases may choose to stay in the Cowboy State.
“We want to position ourselves as America’s destination trade school, and we want WyoTech to be, we want people to see Laramie, Wyoming, and WyoTech, as the next wave of how education should go in this country,” she said. “And that’s what we’re going to keep working toward is that vision of being the best.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
