FARMINGTON—As an educator for 40 years, Jay Welk understands the importance of helping kids succeed. Welk has been the CTE (Career and Technical Education) director for the last five years and spearheaded the effort to develop the new Davis Catalyst Center where students have the opportunity to work directly with industry partners. It opened in January. Now as Welk retires he is turning over the reins to a new director Brian Hunt.

“Brian will bring his own flavor to CTE,” said Welk. “He’s a forward thinker, not boxed in with what education should be. He’ll see CTE elevated higher and better.”

When Welk came in as CTE director he said they completely changed the leadership model. “Everything had been centralized at the district level. We decentralized it and moved it to the high schools to coordinators who taught in those areas.”

The number one reason they switched to the schools is that’s where the rubber hits the road, said Welk. “In administration we’re somewhat detached from the classrooms. Teachers are in it every day. We needed somebody who was teaching that content and felt that really made the difference.”

Welk said he had no CTE experience when he came on. “I had some help but had to research programs on my own. I visited different districts in the state to see their leadership/budget model. We changed both. The budget all came from the central office accounting but we changed that model and gave the same base amount to each school.”

 CTE is funded by enrollment, he said. “Pre pandemic we had the highest CTE enrollment in the state. With increased enrollment over the last three years we were able to increase revenue overall by $8 million and saved over $4 million.”

Welk said they knew the Catalyst Center was coming so they held onto the money and used CTE revenues to purchase equipment.

“We asked all of the schools to do a strategic audit of their programs,” he said. “They used that data to look at all the things that were being offered to see if they were tied to industry needs and whether we were teaching kids as they’re coming out of high school to be ready for post secondary school and careers.”

Catalyst has 53 industry partners, said Welk. “Industry likes it because it’s project based. It’s such a different instruction model. Students get technical skills by doing projects for real companies. We wanted to make it relevant to what they’re learning.”

Before developing the Catalyst Center, Welk visited other schools in different states. “They were mostly centered in the Houston area,” he said. “I saw what you see here. We took a little bit from everyone but I haven’t seen an audio/visual like we have.”

Welk said he worked with the district facilities people to design the center to look more like industry instead of the typical school. “We wanted to add a third dimension where the building fit that a little bit so that when students leave here it’s not a new feel for them when they get into industry.” 

There are CTE programs in all of the high schools. “We want students to take the foundational courses at their high school and then if they want to do a capstone project on Lagoon or Antelope Island they can come to Catalyst,” said Welk. “But we want to take that model out to the schools and build a mini Catalyst at all of those.”

Education is a great environment to work in, he said. “I know people are there who want to help young people improve their station in life. No amount of money makes up for when you get feedback from kids who say you made a difference in their lives. If I had it to do all over again – I would do it all over again.” l