With many older men retiring from the profession or finding new careers, the American Welding Society estimates the country will face a shortage of more than 400,000 welders within the next five years.

At Schenectady’s Modern Welding School, about 10% of current students are women, which doubles the welding industry’s rate across the country.

Colleen Kohler, the executive vice president of Albany’s Noble Gas Solutions, sits on a national committee focused on recruiting more women to the welding industry. Kohler says the committee is exploring creating scholarships to send more women to schools like Modern Welding.

Alyson Manchester is six months into learning welding, a new skill for her.

“I started out just by looking at YouTube,” said Manchester, who grew up in the Mohawk Valley. “I’d never welded before, nothing, so when I came to this school, everything was new to me."

Cassie Sappington has been at it for just a little bit longer.

“I took auto shop and welding in high school instead of art or chorus,” said Sappington, who’s from Alaska. “So I first fell in love with welding in high school.”

Both women are nearing the end of the Modern Welding School’s seven-month training program.

“It’s been really, really cool,” Sappington said while seated inside one of the welding booths at the Schenectady school. “It’s hands-on all day long; our teachers are great.”

“I like the complexity of it, how many different options there are,” Manchester said. “You can fix things, you can make things, there are multiple different processes.”

Modern Welding has been around for more than 80 years. Of the nearly 70 students currently enrolled, only seven are women.

“I am not a man in a man’s field but with a trade, that’s something you can prove,” Manchester said.

“I think that every girl should get the chance to play with a torch and test themselves; get a little scared and see what you can do,” Sappington said.

Across the industry women are even less common than they are at the school. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports only 5% of welders are female.

“I think it’s one thing that kind of got me interested in it, that there aren’t as many females in it,” Sappington said. “I kind of feel cool or a little hardcore sometimes.”

As a supplier of both gases and products, Noble Gas Solutions in Albany has serviced the welding industry for over 80 years.

“When I was little there were really no women involved; now it’s changed,” said Executive Vice President Colleen Kohler, whose father purchased the company more than 30 years ago.

Kohler says just five of Noble Gas Solutions’ 40 employees are women.

“Most of the women that are employed here we have proactively reached out to them,” Kohler said. “We had seen their resumes and said, ‘you seem like a very interesting person, come and get involved.’ They’re employed here, they stay and they like it.”

Kohler is on the board of the national Gas and Welders Distributors Association, or GAWDA. The group recently launched a new committee to explore ways to recruit more women into the industry.

“What we’re trying to do is reach out to young women and show them how exciting the industry is and all the things you can do and really support each other,” she said.

While they’ve yet to raise the necessary funds, Kohler says the committee is hoping to launch a scholarship program to send women to schools like Modern Welding.

“It’s really inspiring, actually, and it’s awesome to be part of something like that,” Kohler said.

“It’s definitely awesome to see that women are becoming more prominent in either a man’s line of work or just trades in general,” Manchester said.

As they near the end of their training, both Manchester and Sappington say they’re eager to make their mark in an industry that, for too long, has been considered a man’s world.

“It’s an awesome feeling,” Manchester said. I didn’t know I would enjoy it this much or be good at it at all, or get the hang of it.”

“I honestly don’t even know what I want yet. I’m just excited for the experience and to get out there and to make my own life out of it and my own journey,” Sappington said.