After 27 years serving the State of Virginia as a vocational sheet metal instructor for a correction’s facility, Jackie Price set out to answer a question employers who would hire his students constantly asked him: “Where can I send my employees to learn what you’re doing?”

 “I said I didn’t know any place unless you could get incarcerated,” Price says, noting his remote part of Virginia is far away from sheet metal local apprenticeship programs as well. For non-union employers, tin knocking and duct fabrication training relies almost exclusively on mentorship and experience from working various custom jobs.