Courtesy of Tulsa Welding School
Sydori Hill arrives for school at 7 a.m. wearing steel-toed boots, a flame-resistant jacket, and a bandana. She takes her place inside one of hundreds of small booths enclosed by a bright-orange, vinyl curtain. Hill, 26, is preparing to become a certified welder: She’s halfway through a seven-month program at Tulsa Welding School, a nationwide trade institute that opened a Decatur location in March.
Sitting in front of a machine called an arc welder, Hill guides its metal rod across a steel plate to practice laying down what welders call beads. By now, producing a clean row of beads is a breeze; the first time she did it, she says, she felt empowered.
“I was like, Who did this?” she recalls. “I’m actually really good at this . . . This is where I’m supposed to be.”
Hill had been working as a cashier and a restaurant hostess when she learned about Tulsa Welding School, which offers tracks in welding, electrical, and HVAC. She saw the welding program as an opportunity to launch a more stable, less tip-dependent career, with a strong starting wage of about $25 an hour.
Starting around $24,000, the program is less expensive, and less time-consuming, than traditional college. Plus, professional trade jobs like these aren’t as vulnerable to being replaced by artificial intelligence, notes campus president Tamekia Morris.
“It’s hands-on. It’s physical. It’s tactile,” Morris says. “So while AI is definitely involved in making things more efficient, I think it’s a less-impacted field.”
These advantages are driving more women to the historically male-dominated skilled trades. Tulsa Welding School’s parent company, StrataTech Education Group, reported that its campuses saw a 19.2 percent increase in female enrollment from 2024 to 2025. “[These women] want to build something where they can be their own entrepreneur and still be able to take care of their family,” Morris says. “That’s been the underlying theme.”
As president, Morris has worked to boost women’s enrollment in the program, highlighting female students on the school’s social media channels and pointing corporate recruiters toward female graduates. Her efforts have earned her the nickname “Rosie the Riveter” among her colleagues—an apt term, given that, as during World War II, the country is facing a critical shortage of skilled trade workers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, for every five of these professionals who retire, two enter the field.
Women can help solve this shortage, but the number one barrier they face isn’t aptitude, Morris says; it’s perception. “Historically, women haven’t been encouraged to consider these fields,” she says. “We want to showcase that you can do this.”
This article appears in our August 2026 issue.
