Contractor Wants to See More Women in Trades
Barbara Scotland of Hughesville, a licensed home improvement general contractor and CSM student, removes a broken toilet flange in one of her rental properties in Calvert County.
Barbara Scotland has been a technical writer, an English professor, and a department chair, and now, thanks to training by the College of Southern Maryland, she is a housing contractor. Ms. Scotland, a resident of Hughesville, wants to see more women in trades.
CSM is committed to offering a diverse range of postsecondary educational opportunities, most recently demonstrated by the opening of the new Center for Trades and Energy Training at CSM’s new Regional Hughesville Campus. The new facility is the home for the programs, courses, and state-of-the art equipment needed to learn or master a career in construction and skilled trades like plumbing, construction, carpentry, HVAC, electrical, and more. The location of the new CTET demonstrates the region-wide value CSM sees in trades and energy training.
“It’s all about putting people to work,” said CSM President Dr. Bradley Gottfried. “It’s about giving them the skills they need to succeed. … It’s about helping students achieve their goals.”
The central location of the Hughesville Campus makes training in the trades more easily accessible to everyone in Southern Maryland —people like Ms. Scotland, who left her previous jobs and retrained herself through CSM to become a housing contractor.
Ms. Scotland spoke recently about the evolution of her life and career and CSM’s role in it, as she worked at one of her housing projects.
Ms. Scotland adjusted her protective eye-gear and knelt down next to a broken toilet flange in the bathroom of one of her rental homes in the Chesapeake Ranch Estates subdivision in Lusby. She turned on her oscillating multi-tool, and as the shrill grinding sound filled the house, Ms. Scotland worked methodically to remove, section by section, the broken toilet flange.
“It’s very empowering,” Ms. Scotland said later of her newfound ability to make her own home repairs.
Skills like these are particularly valuable to Ms. Scotland, a CSM trades student, who is also a licensed home improvement general contractor. With her single-family home rental business, she aims to provide high-quality, affordable housing, with a special interest in renting to women and children.
Ms. Scotland owns 11 houses in Calvert County, eight of which are rented and three that she is in the process of repairing or remodeling. She gets a great deal of satisfaction from repairing, maintaining, and upgrading the homes, and saves money by doing much of her own plumbing, minor drywall repair, painting, and small carpentry projects. What she can’t do or doesn’t want to do herself, she has the knowledge to intelligently contract out to electricians, carpenters, heating and air conditioning professionals, and others.
This career works for Ms. Scotland. “It’s the satisfaction of getting something done and seeing it finished,” she said.
Ms. Scotland has learned her trade through a combination of reading books and online information, watching other professionals, and asking questions. However, she credits trades courses at CSM for much of her skill set. “I’ve taken five classes,” she said. Plumbing courses were eye-opening to the 53-year-old woman who started out in college as an English literature and creative writing major who loved Faulkner and Dickens and then evolved into a technical writer, then a CSM professor and then a department chair and now, finally, to a home improvement general contractor and purveyor of affordable housing.
She did say, however, that there is a clear connection between her earlier liberal arts education and the hands-on technical and construction work she does now. “It’s all about analytical thinking and problem-solving, which is what a liberal arts major is taught to do.”
Ms. Scotland certainly noticed that she has been the only woman in all of her trades classes at CSM so far. She thinks that women don’t even consider work in construction trades as an option. “Women do really well in the trades. They have the fine motor coordination,” Ms. Scotland said. And, with the need to do work in tight areas for some jobs, she noted that sometimes being a smaller size helps with installation and repair work.
There is another reason Scotland encourages women to consider work in the trades. Job opportunities are growing rapidly in electrical, construction, plumbing and heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and commercial refrigeration work. Employment in each of these trade areas is expected to grow by between 20 and 25 percent between 2012 and 2022, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Job growth in the skilled trades has remained strong for many years despite economic ups and downs and it is expected to remain strong looking ahead,” said Dr. Dan Mosser, CSM vice president of continuing education and workforce development. “You cannot off-shore the work of a skilled trades person.”
The new 30,000-square-foot Center for Trades and Energy Training is the first building to open on CSM’s new Regional Hughesville Campus. The new building is home to CSM’s trades department and the Maryland Center for Environmental Training, a program that provides training for wastewater treatment professionals throughout Maryland. MCET moves to the Regional Hughesville Campus from the La Plata Campus grounds.
Additional programs and five additional buildings will be added to the 74-acre Regional Hughesville Campus over the next 15 to 20 years, according to current plans.
For more about the Regional Hughesville Campus, visit CSM’s website. For more about CSM’s trades training and financial assistance, see CSM’s trades website.
For more about the College of Southern Maryland, visit its Leader member page.
