First 15 students complete four-year apprenticeship program in sheet metalOn January 16, fourteen men and one woman were celebrated by their friends, families, instructors, and employers for becoming the first graduates of a four-year apprenticeship program offered by the Houston Area Mechanical Contractor Training Academy (HAMCTA).  HAMCTA, also known as “the Academy”, came to exist through the vision, collaboration, and sacrifice of several mechanical contractors who found a creative way to develop the skilled workforce which is needed in their industry.The idea for the Academy began a few years ago when several mechanical contractors in the Houston area were each experiencing the same frustration with finding skilled workers to hire.  They wanted to establish a program which would provide training with certification and also allow the contractors who had provided the training to retain those workers after they became qualified.  

On a weather-perfect, sunny fall day just north of Houston last month, 280 golfers participated in a charity tournament, luncheon, and silent auction benefitting the Good Shepherd Residential Treatment Center through the recently created Building New Foundations nonprofit volunteer organization.  Thousands of dollars were raised which will benefit the Center which helps boys who are considered to be too “high risk” for regular foster care.  Without the efforts of the staff and volunteers at Good Shepherd, and the money raised from private donations, these boys would not have a safe place to live or much hope for their futures.The golf tournament kicked off with a Putting Contest and a Marshmallow Drive.  Then groups of four took to the links to vie for other awards such as Longest Drive and Closest to the Pin – or at least to turn in a respectable score.  

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently discovered that some metals appear to “heal” themselves under certain conditions.  Graduate student Guoqiang Xu and Michael Demkowicz, a professor of science and engineering at the university, found that when a separating pressure was applied to a cracked piece of a nickel superalloy with which they were working, instead of the crack widening it appeared to fuse together.  The metal appeared to heal itself.An article in MIT News explained what the research team discovered:“Most metals are made of tiny crystalline grains whose sizes and orientations can affect strength and other characteristics.  But under certain conditions, Demkowicz and Xu found, stress ‘causes the microstructure to change: It can make grain boundaries migrate.  This grain boundary migration is the key to healing the crack,’ Demkowicz says.  

Last December we told you about a group of construction workers who volunteered their time, skills, and money to renovate a boys’ home called The Good Shepherd Residential Treatment Center.  The center houses 40 boys at a time who have been removed from their families by Texas courts and are not suitable for regular foster care due to a variety of reasons.  Following that renovation in which over 35 companies participated, the desire to continue to “give back” to deserving organizations in the local community has motivated several leaders in the construction industry to organize and form a new non-profit organization called “Building New Foundations”.  The organization’s mission statement is:“To effect a positive transformation in the lives of the disadvantaged youth of the greater Houston area.  By utilizing the community’s human, financial and spiritual resources, we commit to altering their present state and their future by focusing on their mental, emotional, corporal, educational and spiritual health and growth, as well as improving their current physical environment.”The seven board members have now announced that the first annual Building New Foundations Charity Golf Tournament will be held on Monday, November 11, 2013 in Kingwood, TX and will benefit The Good Shepherd RTC.