TSTC hosts tours for Ft. Hood Veterans groups

(WACO, Texas) – Texas State Technical College hosted two groups from the Killeen area for campus tours on Thursday.

Twenty soldiers in the Army Recovery Care Program’s Soldier Recovery Unit at Fort Hood toured several TSTC programs and ate lunch on campus at the Col. James T. Connally Aerospace Center in Waco. 

The SRU enables military personnel who are ill, injured or wounded to prepare to transition back to civilian life, said Kenneth Buford, TSTC’s statewide director of veteran recruitment.

The goal of the visit was to show the soldiers an option for a cost-effective, quick way to secure an education and move into a great-paying, in-demand job. The soldiers were divided into three groups matched to their interests. Among the programs they visited were Automotive Technology, Avionics Technology and Building Construction Technology.

The soldiers learned about programs that are included in TSTC’s Money-Back Guarantee, which will reimburse graduates their tuition and other fees if they do not have a job in their chosen field within six months of graduation. The soldiers visited the Diesel Equipment Technology, Electrical Power and Controls, Instrumentation Technology and Welding Technology programs. The Electrical Lineworker Technology program is also included in the initiative.

“When you leave here, I want you to go to work,” David Murphy, an instructor in TSTC’s Precision Machining Technology program, told one group of soldiers. “We don’t get paid until you get a job.”

Sgt. Larinso Morgan, a member of the Louisiana National Guard, has been at Fort Hood for two months recovering from injuries he received during a deployment to Iraq. He is also taking online bachelor’s degree-level business and construction management classes offered by Louisiana State University. 

Morgan grew up working alongside his father, who is a carpenter, and has also received experience in the Army as a horizontal construction engineer. He considered his visit to TSTC a great introduction not only to the Building Construction Technology program, but also to other technical fields he had not considered.

This is the third time an SRU group from Fort Hood has toured campus since last fall.

Also on Thursday, board members for Workforce Solutions of Central Texas in Killeen were introduced to various technical programs during a campus tour that included lunch.

For more information on Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu.