The Catholic School Leaders Podcast

16 Dr. Jacob Iman
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Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders Podcast. My name is John Mhalyo, President and Founder of Elementary Advancement Solutions. Today, it's my honor to have Dr. Jacob Imam as my guest on the Catholic School Leaders Podcast. He was born into a Muslim home and converted to Catholicism under the guidance of his godfather, Walter Hooper, who also served as C.S. Lewis's personal secretary. He graduated from the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar with his Master's in Doctorate, writing his dissertation on theology and economics. As a popular speaker and writer on politics and economics, he has appeared on Pints with Aquinas, Fox News and other media outlets.

He is currently the founder and vice president of finance of the College of St. Joseph the Worker in Steubenville, Ohio. He and his wife Alice have three young children. Jacob, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. Thanks

[00:01:00] so much. Great to be with you. A son of Weirton, no, no

less. So I'm proud of that.

I know about that. It is a small world right there. We, we, we knew all the local restaurants to enjoy right there. So, it's, it's all, both of them. Yeah. All I was gonna say, outstanding stuff. So it's, it's, it's an honor to, to talk with you today and I wish I was sitting up there with you enjoying a slice of DiCarlo's pizza, but we'll do this online with the beauty of technology as well.

Right.

Great. Marvelous. Thanks so much.

So a few months ago you know, some of my family members and I started following the news of this College of St. Joseph the Worker up in Steubenville. And so when I had the chance to meet some of the reps from the college at the NCEA this year, I was really excited to invite you and have you on the podcast.

Talk about how this idea came to be.

You know, it began with a conversation that I had with a good buddy of mine at lunch one day. He was in admissions at a college in the south and was starting to question his sales pitch to prospective students and their [00:02:00] families. He was telling them that the education was pretty bad.

Worthwhile in and of itself, and that college was a financially advantageous path for a young person today. I think that both of those claims are dubious in many circumstances, and that the solution, however, is not to get rid of higher education, but to rethink it, to reclaim it, in a way that enables students to, truly have an education that is rigorous and enriching and ultimately does serve as a, as a ladder to the celestial heights of contemplation, but also so that that endeavor is not financially crippling.

And that is exactly what we've tried to do at the College of St. Joseph the Worker. By looking around at a new model, of course, we found Jesus and his foster father, St. Joseph, to provide one quite readily. You know, the word became flesh and spent most of the years of his life at [00:03:00] a carpenter's bench. And there is something quite remarkable about and quite uniquely Catholic, I would say, as well, about uniting the head and the hands, and not trying to divorce these two things from one another, that the active life and the contemplative life really do belong together, and that truly form the person in the virtues, both moral and intellectual so that we can actually look more like Jesus Christ and thus to be able to welcome in his kingdom to this world.

Also there's the nice financial benefit, practical benefit that somebody certainly training in the trades today actually gets paid. And so that is a way in which we can completely offset the tuition cost for their theological education.

Yeah, I think people forget that because, you know, when we think about Jesus and we, we, we think about, you know, all the miracles he did and the, the, [00:04:00] he was also a tradesman.

He, he worked with his hands. He, he, you know, he got dirty. They camped out, you know, it was that's, that's the, that's the life that he lived. And, and so I think it's a, it's an outstanding model that you mentioned the tuition cost that, that you, you do. There's a tuition model, I guess I should say. I think that's a fascinating approach that you take.

And it's a, and it's a six year model. From what I understand. Walk us through that tuition, how it benefits the students, because I think that's something that's really great in what you're doing, is yes, there is a cost to the students, but they're recouping that back on the back end.

Oh, absolutely. And often simultaneously.

So as you mentioned, it is a six year program because they are, our students will be graduating double certified on the one hand with their BA degree, which usually takes about four years or hopefully four years. And then on the other hand with their journeyman's card, which in Ohio here it takes another four years.

So we have done is compressed what would otherwise be [00:05:00] eight years of training into a very rigorous six year program. Now for people that are thinking, wow, six years for my bachelor's degree, that takes a long while, ignoring the fact that, again, you'd be also graduating with your journeyman's card. You have to realize that our students would actually be starting to work full time beginning in their fourth year.

So it's really only three years of full time in Steubenville, Ohio, so it's quicker than the average bachelor's degree. Now there's a couple of reasons why, why we do that. The principle one is that we want to ensure that our students can go back and be certified as a tradesman in the community that they want to be So if you were raised in East Lansing, Michigan, and you want to go back to East Lansing, Michigan, we will set you up with a tradesman in our craftsmen network who will take you on as an apprentice.

[00:06:00] Within East Lansing, Michigan, we needed to be able to do that because transferring your certification as a tradesman today from one state to another is actually more difficult than transferring your license as a doctor or as a lawyer. And so this is part of our, our method and part of our model is going around and finding wonderful Christian tradesmen.

craftsmen around the country whom we have vetted for the quality of their character and the quality of their craftsmanship to take you on and take you into that next phase of your trades training. Now, while you're, once you make that move, your tuition is going to go down to 5, 000 per year, which is just covering your theological education, which you're now doing from afar.

In the first three years, while you're here in Steubenville, while students are here in Steubenville, it's just 15, 000. a year. So in total for this six year program to be double certified as a journeyman and for your BA [00:07:00] degree is a total of 60, 000 which is equivalent to just a single year's tuition in many schools today.

Yeah, for a lot of schools most certain. Now, does that 15, 000 cover room and board or just the tuition piece?

Yeah, it does. There's no food that we, we offer. It does cover housing. Now, just to speak very briefly about the housing model here, we, we see that College is becoming more and more an occasion for delayed adolescence, and that we want to be able to help our students achieve a proper formation as a Catholic adult.

And that means that we need to change things up a little bit. So most colleges see that they, Dormitories and housing is an extra revenue stream for them. For us, we are forgoing the right as landlords to charge rent in lieu of demanding our students to take care of the homes that they are living in.

Now, this is worthwhile to us because I'd say at the [00:08:00] core of, of adulthood is some semblance of responsibility and responsibility is the core of ownership. So we want our students to be less renters and more owners. Owners, both as the founding fathers of America, as well as our good Catholic tradition, would commend us to be.

So that means that anything that an owner has to take care of, they have to take care of. What's the insurance on a house? Well, you're going to figure that out. What's the utilities every month? Well, you're going to figure that out. What's the maintenance on this house? Well, you're going to figure that out.

Now, all said and done, it's going to be exceedingly cheaper for our students to do that rather than do. pay rent. But the main goal for us here is not just that financial piece, but really the maturity piece. We want them to have the occasion of growing up rather than the occasion staying where they are.

And I think that is such an outstanding model right there. I mean, because when we go to college [00:09:00] when kids, you know, in a traditional four year college, they go to college, they live in the dorm, they're taking those general requirements for the first couple years. And anybody that's looked at college tuition, it's here's the tuition piece, but here's the room and board piece.

Oh man. Which is sometimes double and triple just what that cost of the tuition

is. Oh, it's just incredible how expensive it becomes once you, once you factor that in. And so we want to ensure, again, that there is no extra hidden fees or things that are going to lead our students to being financially shackled the future.

And of course, learning how to cook for yourself, having that skill and management of your kitchen is one such way in which you can not only cook for yourself, eat better, but also live cheaper. So we've been part of an initiative of getting a small local farm to shelves grocery store started right here, kind of in the center of downtown Soonville, which we're really quite excited about.[00:10:00]

And that will be the local shop. Cheaper than Kroger's, I would say. You can just look at that on the price shelves. So again, having good food and be able to live well. All kind of enjoying the urban life of walkability that's available to them.

Well, and I love that, you know, there's so many schools out there that say, we want to create well rounded students.

We want to create well rounded students. But you're truly doing that. I mean, you're, what you're doing with this, you're, you're teaching them not only in the classroom, but outside of the classroom. I think that's a fantastic model right there.

Well, thanks. I appreciate it. We're having fun doing it, so.

Absolutely. And doing it quite well, it sounds. Now, now, one of the things that I've heard you say, and I, and I've seen this written, is we are not a trade school. We, we, we are a six year college. We're, we're offering the trades to teach the trades, but we're not a trade school. So let's talk about that academic curriculum piece, since many people will see the word trade and automatically dismiss or, or, you know, the, the intellectual element or [00:11:00] whatever the case they might say.

But that's a huge part of your program in addition. Can you talk about the curriculum that you're doing?

Oh, absolutely. We, we, if this is just a trade school, I wouldn't be interested in doing it. You know, I wouldn't have founded that. I wouldn't work for it. If it was just a college, well, it's kind of the same situation there, too.

This is a full education curriculum. in the Catholic intellectual tradition, as well as a full education in the trades. We're not compromising on either. It is full blown exploration into both. Now, I think that there are, the population of Catholic trade schools is a really great thing, Because not everybody should go on for higher education.

I fully acknowledge that. I think that's absolutely right. But this false dichotomy, or I think rather I would say this dichotomy that people make between people who are meant for trade school and meant for college is a Is false, that that is wrong, right? I think the very person of Jesus Christ reveals that to be [00:12:00] incorrect.

The smartest guy that ever lived was a tradesman. So just because people, not all people are meant for college does not mean that that that category distinction is valid. It's invalid. We are supposed to cultivate our minds as well as our bodies. And so our, we're really quite delighted that the first.

population, the first student population really gets that. Now I'll cite here in a moment our average standardized test score, and I know that this is an imperfect marker on many levels, but it gives you a little bit of taste of the quality student that comes out. We have, in our inaugural class, an average standardized test score of 90, of the 90th percentile.

I mean, these are smart kids that want to be electricians and that want to be carpenters. And we will convince more of them to want to be plumbers too, I'll tell you what. So, we're really delighted by that. And I think there's many, many factors that are all very interesting [00:13:00] about why are building methods in the States and really in the West as a whole have gotten worse and worse throughout?

time. But one such way is that we have actually been demeaning the people who go into it. We think poorly of them. We don't give them the due respect and dignity that they deserve. And I hope that our students can come in who are who are Intellectually high achieving and have already also proven themselves to be quite handy, at least in this initial batch, to go on and say, no, no, no, we need to approach building better, building the kingdom of God better, building the countries better, but also just building our homes better too.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's so important. And I think You know, talking about our home life, that's, that's where it starts. That's our, that's our primary vocation. My primary vocation is as a husband and as a father. Okay. This vocation that I'm [00:14:00] doing through, through this podcast is, is the secondary vocation to that as the home life.

And I think that's so important right there.

Oh, absolutely. And most people think about, I mean, just to kind of hit on this really quick, a lot of people think about their homes as an investment today, you know, it's like, it's the most expensive asset that I, that I own, and that is a real perversion of how we're called to think about our home, which is primarily as a gift for our family and the, the location, the context, the occasion of nurturing that family up into heaven.

And so, to be able to understand that money, that we shouldn't primarily be building for money, but building for families, and housing not for investment, but housing for Nurturing. That's really going to start to change a lot as well, and I think that that's part of the inheritance that we find in the Catholic intellectual tradition, and why we're not backing down from that, but [00:15:00] doubling down on it at the College of St.

Joseph the Worker.

I love it. I love it. Now, in addition to teaching the students the actual trade do you also give them the basic business skills, so example, working as an electrician is very different than starting a business, being an electrical contractor. What sort of skills do you give the students to kind of prepare them, not only for the trade, but maybe that secondary piece where they're actually going to step into business ownership?

Yeah, great question. You know, this is, this is a big thing. We, we say that currently we find this massive quantity problem in the trades. It's so hard to find a tradesman out there. In fact, three tradesmen are retiring for every one entering in to, to the crafts today. But, Our goal here is really fixing the quality problem.

You know, if you have a quantity problem, you inherently have a quality problem in the trades, and that's what we're focusing on. So we want not to just populate job sites with laborers, [00:16:00] but job sites with leaders, and that means really giving them that whole well rounded formation starting with the spiritual, going through the, the technical aspects of the trades, but also being able how to know how to organize people well and to run a proper business.

So we do offer courses, and what I think, as someone who's started business, are really the most important aspects of of entrepreneurship, which are really knowing your business. business accounting to know your business law to know what it what it really takes to start to organize and plan which it goes you know it was just really more the foundational aspects of production today rather than say something.

Relatively lame, like marketing, I would say.

Yeah, it was much more well put than I would say. Yeah, no, I agree with you totally, because there are those different components of things. There's, there's the, you know, even in, even in Catholic education, there's the business [00:17:00] of Catholic education, but then there's the business side of Catholic education.

And for our trades, There's the business of the trade, but then there's the, the actual business side of the trade.

Oh, absolutely. So, you know, and this is, it's really quite technical for any business that you're in, like how, how you're forming your financial models to make, and to ensure that you're, Self sustaining and thriving, but also, you know, in the trades, it gets so complicated given the nature of bids and projections that you have to do on every single job, and so ensuring that our students know how to do that and walk through it well.

You know, I think one other thing to kind of go back up to, the theoretical is that organization order itself is just critical to really being a good leader. You know, you think about in the military context, if there is no hierarchy, if there is no leadership, then you don't have an organization. army, you have a [00:18:00] mob, you know, the fact that there is a differentiation is that there are specific roles to play and that there is an order To maintain, ensures the very identity of the army itself and the business is actually no different in that, in that, in that respect And so to be able to, you know, teach our students or to set them on the occasion of to creatively shape an organizational structure is really essential.

And so we're really excited to give them that training as well.

And I would bet you that in terms of post graduation support, by these graduates going and entering the workforce as potential business owners, it provides them the opportunity to be mentors for future folks that go to your, to your school.

And, you know, it just allows them to, to continue that mentoring along the lines of what they learned [00:19:00] and applying it and placement of, of trades into their apprenticeship and things like that.

Oh, totally. You know, I often say that within this, the new evangelization, one of the major areas that have been overlooked is in fact the trades.

We're not sending out missionaries to blue collar contexts. And so while it would be great for our students or graduates to go off and found businesses and to encourage people to come to the College of St. Joseph's Worker, and then they get their apprentices back, odds are that they're going to be hiring people that primarily.

come from the college and that they with, within a very profound education within our, our beautiful tradition are going to be the missionaries, are going to be the leaders that, that welcome welcome tradesmen in into the, into the fullness of the faith. And so I'm, I'm really quite proud of that.

Excited about that aspect in particular. Absolutely.

Now, when a student enters [00:20:00] the school in year one you know, we said it's a six year program. Tell me what that first year looks like. Second, because we kind of got to what the fourth, fifth, six years look like. Yeah. Walk me through kind of what those first three years are looking like in terms of how much time are they spending actually in the, the, the workshops or things like that versus the classroom versus, you know, being out in the field and things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great question. So that first year is the only year that our students will not be on job sites making money. And there's been a, there's a couple of reasons for that, but what we found in our research is that tradesmen lose, on average, a dollar per hour for every new recruit. Now that is a significant loss, but it's one that they're willing to take because over the years, They'll start to make money on them, and there's just nobody else out there.

But they're going to be tripping over wires. They don't know how to suite the floor. They don't know the technical aspects. And all the while, the [00:21:00] GC is going to be focusing on production. And that's the main thing that he has to focus on, is getting the job done, and ensuring that his business is sustainable.

And so we've decided, as a result of that, to just Take our students off of job sites for that first year and spend an enormous amount of time with them in our Workshop here in Steubenville. So they're gonna be here about 20 to 21 hours a per week Getting a full education in what we call the anatomy of a home to really understand the full logic of a building and how all the various different trades actually interact with one another within a single building.

Now, if you go to a trade school today, you're not going to have this sort of, this, this type of integrated education. You're going to learn one trade and you're going to learn it very well, but if you're on the, attract to become an electrician. You are not learning the finer details of carpentry. You're not learning the finer [00:22:00] details of masonry.

You're not learning the finer details of HVAC and plumbing, which our students will do. So that entire first year is dedicated to the anatomy of a home. Now, once that year's over, our students can pick a track, one of the four major building trades to concentrate in but that, that will come only at the end of that first year.

Now, also in that first year will be a full education in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which really is the foundation of all theological studies. So that is a very intensive program. Focusing on really the Bible and the tradition. And so that is going to be in about eight hours in the classroom each week.

And of course double that in terms of homework. So our students are going to be busy. I guess we can, we can put it say the least. [00:23:00] Yeah.

and I think their first year by, by doing that anatomy piece, it, it allows them to also experience. The different trades, because as you pointed out, you said, Hey, we're hoping to convince a couple to go in this direction.

You may come in with one interest in mind, but then kind of get a feel for something else and say, well, I really have a talent for this. But by giving them that, that sampling, I guess, so to speak of what the different pieces of, of, of the, the, the whole educational scope may look like could, could lead them to where their

true passion lies.

Oh, absolutely. You know, I think we're going to have quite a number of people who are coming in as electricians. That is absolutely the thing that people tend towards most. And I think once they start to see Adam Robisoli, who is one of our trade instructors Working on timber frame structures as a carpenter, they might say, you know, maybe I'll, I'm gonna try and do this old traditional form of building instead.

Or they might, they might spend more time with, with Mike [00:24:00] Sullivan, our president and say, you know what, actually this, this plumbing thing, it's not as down and dirty as I thought it was. It's actually quite technical. I'm doing a lot of math. This is really fun. And so they'll have that, that pivot of opportunity.

And no matter what they'll, they'll. be a, they'll be quite dangerous to, you know, in the context that they are when, if they do come out to be the place of a general contractor, they really will know how everything works.

And there is a lot of that higher level thinking. I remember when we were doing the renovation at the high school that I was leading, you got to see just how much analytical data they were having to collect and figure and things like that.

It wasn't just slap this pipe on and take this one off. And they, I mean, the plumbers up there were, were really, really in depth and I was, I really learned a lot just by watching them, not that I could do it myself, but just through watching what they were doing just to see how, how in depth that process was.

Oh yeah. No, it's, it's, it's a serious, it's a serious deal. I think we have for various reasons to mean the [00:25:00] blue collar trades in, in the states today. And for some strange real reason we've clumped the trades into like assembly line work. It is like, no, in, in the trades there's an enormous amount of.

of creativity that's demanded of you. Your creativity is not sapped from you as an assembly line. Oh, exactly. Is it's actually demanded of you. That creative capacity is probably higher there than in many white collar jobs today.

Yeah, absolutely. You see the carpentry work and you just see some of the.

things that these, these talented men and women create. And you just go, how did they do that? There is a skill there that isn't definitely not an assembly line piece by any way, shape or form. And so, it's just something that, that I, I respect the heck out of. Are you seeing some emerging trades or, or where do you see the future growth in terms of trades?

Do you see any, any opportunities else to add on to these four areas in the future? Or do you see anything? [00:26:00]

That's a great question. Masonry is definitely the thing that we're heading towards first particularly mass masonry is, is something that's of great interest to us. Now, those who don't know, mass masonry is really where you have structural masonry walls, and you tend to have your inside wall being your outside wall as, as well, so.

Not just, we're stick framing a building and then sticking up a brick facade on the front of it. This is the main thing that's supporting the building. And there's tons of benefits to to this. But most notably is that these are not temporary homes, as I like to say. In stick framing, you might have a longevity, you might, the house might last for 80 years, something like that, maybe 100 years.

And at the end of those 100 years, well, the aesthetics of it are going to be so bad that you're going to want to tear it down anyway, in case it's still standing. But when it pertains to something traditional like timber framing or masonry, it has a [00:27:00] structural longevity. As well as an aesthetic longevity, it's something that you're going to want to keep on to and hand down from generation to generation.

And so that's really quite an exciting development that we have in the works right now, and planning and plotting is additional fifth track at the College of St. Joseph the Worker. You know, we, we, I think mechanical work, auto mechanical work is something that we might, you know, Add in the future, the capital expense to that is significant comparatively.

And so that's part of the reason why we haven't headed there. Metalwork is another, but we'll see where St. Joseph leads us.

Now, I want to go back to something you talked about before, because You talked about placing your students with leaders in the community or with trades folks in the community. And so leadership's extremely important to your school.

I mean, I noticed the outstanding leadership that you have at the college just on your board. Okay. Thank you. Can you talk about the [00:28:00] importance of the Catholic leadership, I guess, and we touched on this a little bit, but I really think This is so important that I want to go back to it again, okay? Not only in what you're doing as a trade, but in your families, in the workplace, in your community.

To me, that importance of Catholic leadership can't be overstated. And I really want to touch on that again in terms of how you're focusing on that at the College of St. Joseph.

Well, part of it is the nature of the trades themselves. So, so, you know, before we were talking about how necessary order is in an organization.

Those are going to be cultivated through a series of different contexts. And let me just name two of them for the sake of a shorter conversation. One is on the side of permanency and the other is on the side of skills. In our day to day lives, we are so transient as Americans. Many places that we were born in are not the places that we're living.

The places where we were raised are not the places that we are currently working. [00:29:00] And that doesn't give you the occasion of being grounded and rooted to a particular people and a particular community. The trades are almost move proof. They're transient proof because you can't export their work. The building needs to be built here.

The home needs to be built here. You can't export that to China or Mexico. And so that is an essential aspect of leadership, of real leadership, of good leadership, is actually fidelity of being grounded and rooted in a place so that You could be depended upon. You know, leadership is for others. It's not for yourself.

We have that so twisted. Today, we, you know, I, a lot of conservatives will poke at liberals for celebrating the vice of pride, but conservatives celebrate the vice of ambition. And that's what St. Thomas Aquinas [00:30:00] says is the desire to have greater honor with not relating that back to the past. to the good of the community.

All right, that's a big problem for us Americans today. We love ambition. We go after it and we celebrate it. But leadership, true leadership, is lived for others and not for yourself. And that means being almost annoyingly rooted to a spot where people can get a hold of you can depend on you, where your life is lived not for yourself but for others.

So I say that is an essential aspect to what we're talking about here, is actually just giving our students the occasion. of permanence. The second is, in terms of skill, you know, you can only give to others what you yourself have. And I like to use the example of Mike Sullivan again, our president of the College of St.

Joseph the Worker. It's a great example. He just, you know, De [00:31:00] facto is one of the leaders of our parish, and it's because he is just so skilled. He knows how everything works. He knows how to put systems together people. We live today in what is I call an oblique technological landscape. We don't know. how the structures in the systems that we depend on for our daily lives actually work.

I think it's actually a cause of anxiety that we often don't talk about enough because we don't realize that how dependent we are, that we are not masters of the machines, they are masters of us. This is something that John Paul II talked about so beautifully in Laborum Exercens in that 1981 encyclical.

And so to be able to have real skills and real knowledge of the workings of our world so that we can then go off and share these things is actually an, it's an [00:32:00] essential aspect of leadership insofar as you have moved more from potency to efficiency. Actuality, insofar as you've had an opportunity to develop knowledge and, but to actually be more capable and therefore have a greater capacity of greater self giving.

There's more to share. I think also about my, my buddy Dave, who is just knows how everything works and everybody is always calling him for a favor not because he utilizes his skills for financial gain. I mean, he doesn't work professionally as a tradesman but rather because he's just a really good friend.

You know, nobody calls me for help, you know, it's like, what, what is Jacob going to do, lift something heavy? I mean, that's just like, you know, I, I'm trying to grow these skills specifically for him. So that I can be a better friend to people because I admire Dave and Mike Sullivan so much. I'm working on these skills so that I, I have that greater capacity to self give.[00:33:00]

And if leadership is an essential component of leadership is self giving, then there needs to be more of you to give. These skills are essential to that as well. So I would say to kind of make make the case of true leadership. It's much more on that de facto side rather than anything the your legal side.

It's not just, oh, his name tag says boss. It's actually, no, he is just the most competent amongst us. He's the most stable amongst us. He's the most dependable amongst us. That is the core of leadership and that's really what we're trying to hand on to our students.

And I think that hits the head because you don't need the title.

to be the leader. Okay. Every business, every school, every organization has leaders within them that, that don't have that title on their, on their name badge or whatever the case might be, but they're the person everybody looks to. And they're the person that everybody wants to see how they're handling a situation and things like that.

And so I think that's, that's so important. And it's a [00:34:00] skill that is, is lost so many times for sure. So I think that's amazing that, that a lot of the focus is going there. A lot of students would benefit greatly from, from the College of St. Joseph, the Worker. I think what you're offering is absolutely outstanding.

If there's a student out there, if there might be a parent or a school leader or somebody out there that's listening to this and they're starting to think, maybe that's something that might be for me, what do you suggest that they do to maybe explore

this a little bit further? You know, we have these courses this summer.

It's an introduction to timber framing, it's an introduction to mass masonry that is really a phenomenal way to get to know us at the College of St. Joseph the Worker. The courses range in length. You can go online at collegeofstjosephs. com and look at those, but they all have a theology component to them and all have a trades component to them as well.

And so you get [00:35:00] a real taste of what day to day uniting is. the head in the hands could be like. And so I'd really, I would commend that to people. And, you know, we, we had, we started these courses last year and the prim, primarily people who had already matured into a career came to them, a disproportionate number of engineers, as a matter of fact.

But one of them actually just called us up because he is, able to quit his job and got a job working for a professional timber framer, just based upon the skills that he learned while, while here. So, so it's really quite a, a wonderful opportunity, not only to get to know us, but to acquire some serious skills that will in your life, whether or not you use them professionally or not, always be an asset.

Skills are always an asset. They're never a liability.

No, without question. And, and anybody that owns a home, as you talked about before, is probably going to use those skills. And. You don't realize just how much you appreciate them until you need them. And you [00:36:00] know, no matter what, whatever it is, okay you can, you can say, well, I don't want to do this.

And then something goes wrong in your house where you got to fix something of the plumbing or electrical or things like that. Oh

man.

And it's important skill to know without question.

Oh man. Yeah. No average call to a plumbers. 250, 300, you know, it's like every single time you're saving yourself that money.

Yeah, exactly. And also the

dignity of, of being able to say, you know, this is my home. I'm taking responsibility for it directly. That is so satisfying.

I agree with that completely right there. And, and no, you know, no, look no further than when somebody walks by your house and compliments your lawn and you go, wow, your lawn looks really good.

Mine doesn't. What are you doing? And you kind of, yeah, that's like, this is what I do. No matter what it is, but when you're a homeowner, when you're, whether you're a renter, homeowner, whatever, somebody comes into your home and they compliment something that you yourself have done, you yourself have built, you yourself have done work on, there's a pride in that, that you can't put a price tag on and to know that you, you did that, it's something [00:37:00] that really instilled something in you.

What's, what are some your plans for the next five years for the school? Where do you see opportunities for growth and to expand? I know you talked a little bit about them before, but just in terms of I, I always tell people, you know, hey, we would need to be thinking about what's going on down the road.

And I know you're, you're already doing that. What are your plans? Where do you see things going in the future?

Yeah, well, in addition to rolling out another track or two, the big thing that we're currently working on is building up a local construction company so that we don't just have to place our students out into various crews around town, which is wonderful and very good, but so they can work for us directly.

And that enables us to do a couple of things. One, it enables us to set our prices slightly lower for the community while also, while still paying our students very, very well. We can do jobs for slightly cheaper and the main reason for doing that is that we can take a little bit more time on jobs to keep education [00:38:00] as the principal focus of their time of obtaining their on the job training hours rather than just merely production.

And so that's something that is very exciting for us and a pretty big lift that we're, we're in the midst of right now.

Dr. Ma, I want to first and foremost thank you so much for the time today. Please be assured that myself, my family, all of us out there will be keeping all of you in our prayers.

We'll be anxious and we're so eager, not anxious, but we'll be eager to watch your growth up in Steubenville. And obviously any way that we can support you, don't hesitate to let us know.

Well, I appreciate that so very much. This whole thing's built up by prayers and really, that is we've seen that more and more as the time goes on, that this really is St.

Joseph's College. We just work here, and so we know this whole thing's buoyed up by, by his, his aid, and Others interceding to him. So thank you so much.

Yeah. I hear Dallas Jenkins say all the time, it's not my job to feed the 5, 000 just to bring the loaves and the fishes. And so [00:39:00] it seems to me like that's you're, you're allowing a intercession to work through you.

So that's amazing. Wish you nothing but the best in all of our continued prayers.

Well, God bless you. Thanks a million, John.

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