WDN Campus Connection: Southeast Welding Technology students craft lasting legacy with monumental monograms
By Katryn Conlin, for Winona Daily News Campus Connection
December 2024
What's new at Minnesota State College Southeast? A three-dimensional "SE" monogram, the symbol of Southeast, has just been installed near the main entry to the Winona campus.
Standing proudly at more than five feet tall, it's welded from 10-gauge steel and powder-coated in the college's signature green colors. It's designed so people can stand on a step and look over it for pictures. Best of all, it was fabricated by the college's welding students!
Welding instructor Casey Mann has a passion for hands-on projects that give his students the opportunity to make an impact on the college and the community. In recent years, his Welding Technology students have produced several items for Light Up Downtown: an oversize Christmas tree, a giant Santa's sleigh, and a snowman. All three are on display at Peter's Biergarten for the holidays.
A 1982 graduate of Minnesota State College Southeast, Mann worked in the welding profession for 27 years in family-owned shops, large scale fabrication shops, and road crews. But since 2003, his true calling has been teaching generations of Southeast students the fine art of welding.
"I like passing the knowledge that I have gained over the years to the students," he said. "You can get the correct verbiage from a book, but I can teach them the tricks to the trade that they can only learn in the lab."
Welding students start the semester with "coupon work" -- learning a variety of welding processes on pieces of metal in a flat position. But Mann is always eager to get them into more challenging projects, like fabricating not one, but two Southeast monograms - one for Winona and a second one for the Red Wing campus.
Mann designed everything last summer so that when the students started college in August, the logo project was ready for them. The faces of the monograms were laser cut at Schell's Precision Edge. The curved parts of the sides were rolled on equipment borrowed from Rushford Manufacturing.
Once his students had mastered welding basic skills, they were ready to put them to use.
"It was fun, because that was the first project the entire class worked on together," said student Mason Laumb.
An 18-year-old from Houston, MN, Laumb began welding at Southeast as a PSEO student. He started thinking of welding as a career when he was in high school. "It's a pretty good field to get into. The money is very good, and if you have the skill, you can do a lot with it."
24-year-old student Callie Garland, originally from Eveleth, MN, now lives in Kasson, MN. She commutes an hour to Southeast because she wanted a full-year welding diploma.
Garland's parents were very supportive when she decided to pursue welding after trying out jobs in health care, restaurants, automotive, and retail. "They told me, if you don't want a desk job, if you don't want to do the typical college route, go into the trades! You will make money, you'll have constant work," she said.
Garland said that once the class started work on the monograms, things got interesting.
"For example, maybe you're working at a weird angle. So how do you get into a position and make it so that you're still welding at 90 degrees from the plate itself?" Garland explained. "We got a lot of practice doing out-of-position welds, which was really nice."
One of the trickiest challenges was filling in small gaps in the seams. As Garland explained, "Any gap outside of tolerance you would have to put together with a series of spot welds. You're just pressing the trigger once and letting go, then moving a little and doing it again."
By the middle of November, the students had smoothed the edges and polished the flat surfaces in preparation for painting. At that point, Mann taught the students another trick of the trade -- drilling small holes along the bottom of each part so that if moisture ever got inside, it would be able to drain out.
Finally, the monograms were sent out to Custom Powder Coating in Minnesota City to be powder-coated for a bright, durable, professional finish.
On December 13, truck driving range assistant Val Gudmundson picked up the monograms and delivered them to campus in one of Southeast's tractor-trailer trucks. The students were thrilled to see them loaded onto a forklift and moved into position for permanent installation.
Casey Mann's Welding Technology class of 2025 will always be able to look back with pride at the work they did to help Minnesota State College Southeast establish its brand.
Callie Garland said she loved welding and working on the project. "I enjoyed the physical aspect of working with my hands, then looking back and seeing a product that I made. I can say I'm proud of it, it's out in the world, and I did that!"
"Especially like when you have a project like the logo, you have something to work towards and people will see it, so you can show off your hard work," said Mason Laumb. "I like to think it's going to be here for a long time."
Photo captions:
Top: Students from the Welding Technology class of 2025 pose proudly with the Southeast monogram they fabricated for the college.
Below:
Welding instructor Casey Mann shows off the monogram in August, before students began welding.
Mason Laumb, a welding student from Houston, MN.
Callie Garland, a welding student from Kasson, MN.