Manufacturing

Matthew Koren

Millwright

Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, Matthew Koren is a millwright (a specialized technician who installs and maintains industrial machinery). But he's the first in his family to enter the field through a registered apprenticeship program.

The four-year program began for Matthew soon after high school with an introductory Millwright Unit I class, taught through his local union. From there, Matthew recalls, “"I went to John Tyler Community College and took machining, welding, and blueprint-reading classes, then I went to West Virginia for rigging and turbine classes."” 

While taking classes at night, Matthew gained on-the-job experience during the day, working on such diverse projects as the Ford truck assembly line in Norfolk and the HyperSonic XLC” ride at King's Dominion. ("That was a good job,"” says Matthew. "I aligned rails for cars to go around the track, set transfer tracks, set the scales to know how much air pressure to shoot the cars with.")

One of the attractions of the occupation for Koren is that you gain a variety of different skills: we work on turbines and generators, conveyors, pumps, and motors.” He adds that another attraction about the job is that it's a good, solid future, with good benefits, and good retirement.”

With his apprenticeship behind him, Matthew can now work toward achieving full journeyman status within his trade. But for the moment, he's just looking forward to doing what he likes best, which is getting out there and building something.”