TSTC Electrical Lineworker graduate happy to blaze trail for other women

(ROSENBERG, Texas) – Summer graduation at Texas State Technical College’s Fort Bend County campus has come and gone, but it will be one remembered forever by those present in no small part thanks to Kelly Gomez.

Cheers poured in from everyone in attendance on graduation night as they announced Gomez as the first female student from TSTC’s Fort Bend County campus to graduate from the Electrical Lineworker and Management Technology program.

“They told me I was the first when I enrolled here, but I was sure there was no way,” she said. “So when they announced it at graduation as well, I thought it was super cool and felt blessed to have that spotlight.”

Gomez graduated from the lineworker program with her certificate of completion. Before graduation, she had already lined up a job with Spark Power, a Canadian-based power company with headquarters in Houston.

While the job will require quite a bit of traveling on her end, Gomez still plans to move forward with more education, focusing on an associate degree next. Her experiences have left her more driven than ever to gain whatever knowledge she needs to meet her goals.

She hopes that after gaining her associate degree and further experience in the field, she will be able to become a foreman or even find a place within top-level management at a utility company.

“There were times when I first started that I felt like I couldn’t do it due to my height or strength,” Gomez said of the lineworker program. “For any woman looking into the program, if you feel like you can’t do it, just know one person did and you can do it too.”

She is glad that she can be a role model for women in the program. And thanks in part to an interview she did a few months ago, three other women are now enrolled in the lineworker program.

Gomez urges those who follow her just to do their best and do it because they love it. While she admits there are challenges, she believes that anyone can overcome them and succeed.

TSTC offers Electrical Lineworker and Management Technology at its Abilene, Fort Bend County, Harlingen, Marshall and Waco campuses. An Associate of Applied Science degree and a certificate of completion are available.

The program is part of TSTC’s Money-Back Guarantee, which refunds a participating graduate’s tuition if he or she has not found a job in their field within six months of graduation. For more information, visit tstc.edu/mbg.

For more information about TSTC, go to tstc.edu.