Todd Glaze Transforms His Career After Energy Technician Training

For Todd Glaze, attending the Energy Technology program was about completing a program that would help him pursue a career that brought him excitement. “Growing up, I enjoyed working with my hands on go-karts and small motors, but the reason I went to MIAT (now UTI) is mainly for the program and all the good things it had to offer,” he shares.

Todd graduated from the Canton, Michigan, campus (formerly MIAT), with a 4.0 GPA and obtained his associate of applied science degree from the Energy Technology program, which combines the curriculum of the Wind Power Technician and Industrial Maintenance Technician training programs. He’s now working as a switchgear technician at Birclar Electric & Electronics.¹

“My education means a lot to me,” he says. “I got to learn a lot, get a lot of certificates and understand the core foundation of everything we do here in the trades.”

Although Todd is thrilled to be in the field working, he’s already thinking about the next steps in his career. “Some of my goals for my future personally is to work a little bit. Get some job experience on my résumé and then I plan to go back to school to become an engineer.”

Throughout his training, Todd says he was able to put himself ahead in his career aspirations. “I earned all of my certificates while I was at school. All the classes walk you through it,” Todd explains. But it was up to him to take advantage of this opportunity, leverage his classes and pass his tests.⁶

Todd’s daily duties now revolve around the industrial power breaker, and his days are often split between power plants.

He explains, “Day to day, when I’m working on the power breakers and I have to retrofit them, I have to rewire and check the voltage on the motors. If we go out into the field and we’re working on breakers and transformers, we have to make sure we ground everything, check the voltage, check the amperage.”

Todd finds that he often refers to what he learned in his classes. “A skill I learned and still use now is the electrical courses. The 120 DC, AC and three-phase. I use that every day,” he says.

But it’s not just the curriculum that he carries with him each day on the job, it’s the expertise shared by his instructors. “My instructors at MIAT were absolutely phenomenal. They’re really what made the school that much better.”

For some of us, transitions can be hard. Whether it’s transitioning from high school to trade school, or from trade school into the field. Fortunately for Todd, he found the transition into his career to be easy and natural.

“The transition from MIAT to work was nice and smooth,” he says. “The foundation, everything I learned at school was applied here, and it just made grasping everything here a lot easier.”

Many students who have used the school’s Career and Student services have reported an experience similar to Todd’s. For someone to be successful in their career after attending school, he recommends paying attention in class and utilizing the resources provided for you.

For example, Todd was able to find his current employer through the help of our Career Advisors.¹ “My MIAT advisor would text me openings from different employers and whichever one I wanted her to submit my resume for, she would. She did that for this job, they called me and gave me an interview and we went from there.”

Wondering if a career in the skilled trades would be a good fit for you? Contact us to learn more about our programs. And you could heed Todd’s advice, “If you like working with your hands, then go for it."