Meet Mason Winters: New welding instructor

This archived article was written by: Priscilla Sharp

From the Uintah Basin, to California, to Ireland, Mason Winters was recently named the new welding instructor at Utah State University Eastern. He grew up and lived in the Uintah Basin, which is where most of his family resides. He lived in the Uintah Basin when it resembled Price instead of a large busy city. He started going to welding competitions at Uintah High School and through those got a scholarship to USU Eastern back when it was the College of Eastern Utah.
Winters lived in California for the past three years before coming back to Utah. He worked for Sandia National Laboratories in his time there. “We developed and qualified welding procedures and prototypes for the department of energy,” he stated. He found this job on the American Welding Society Website shortly after graduating from Weber State University with his bachelor’s degree in welding and engineering technology. In this job, he was able to use just about every type of welding that exists and even some that were developmental.
The largest amount of money that Winters has made in a single day was $2,500. His old boss had called him when he was overwhelmed with work. He was getting paid $8 for each part, and it took him a minute and a half to compile them.
While Winters attended CEU, he was put through the strenuous work of the welding competitions. He says the thing he is most proud of in his life is, “Constantly pushing myself through all the welding competitions I was at CEU. That was two years of tremendous struggle that I went through, dedicated my life towards training. It is essentially the Olympics for skills and trades industries.”
Through these competitions, Winters basically put his life on hold, “I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t go to school. I just trained, seven days a week for two years.” He was discouraged at the end of his immense training, but he still managed to go to Weber State and achieved his engineering degree.
The most satisfying thing Winters does weekly, he says, is, “Watching the students improve themselves, in welding and in how I am able to help them out easily because I’ve done so much of it in my lifetime.” Aside from teaching, Winters enjoys boating, especially going to Lake Powell, which he says is basically his favorite place in the world. He also enjoys riding his dirt bike and his newest hobby; restoring a Bronco for his wife.
“It feels good to come back to the program that I came through, and hopefully see myself improve the program, because there is definite benefit that I can add to our program. It is a pretty good feeling coming back, being able to help a program that helped me so much,” he said.