From Apprentice Carpenter to an Instructor.
Glen Martin started his carpentry career as an apprentice in 1974. By 1978, he earned his journeyman card. Later that year the commercial building “tanked” and like many other Union Carpenters work was minimal at best. Glen received a call from a man named Ken who needed some help setting trusses on a custom house right on Lake Washington and asked if he could use a job. Of course Glen said yes and continued working with him building custom homes for the next 4 years. Glen’s still not sure how Ken he got his name!!
He left his Union Journeyman status and shifted right into non-union residential construction. Glen loved it from the start, doing every aspect of a home. Prior to that his carpentry experience he had been in heavy concrete construction. He didn’t even know how to build a house until Ken hired him and taught him everything.
While working for Ken, Glen started to take a interest in teaching and proceeded to take night classes at Green River and earned his AA degree then transferred to Central Washington University and earn his BAEd in Industrial Education (i.e. shop teacher). His first job was teaching woodshop at Kent Junior High. That’s where he learned how to teach and it was a great and fun experience. Glen still runs into former Jr. High students he had and even has close connections with many of them still.
Fast forward to 1989, Glen’s Mom loved to read the Kent News Journal from cover to cover and called him and said there’s a classified add for a Carpentry Instructor at Green River Community College. Not quite sure if he was qualified, Glen applied and was hired September 1989- 32 years ago.
Since then it has been a tremendous ride. The number of students Glen got to work with and teach, the great colleagues of faculty and staff here at GRC(C ), the opportunities to take his students to volunteer projects and creating the program that it is today is more than rewarding. Glen thinks this job has been awesome and deeply enjoys the time he got to spend here.
