(MARSHALL, Texas) – Jorge Martinez and Autumn Sereno, two Drafting and Design students from Texas State Technical College’s Marshall campus, returned from the 2025 SkillsUSA Texas Postsecondary Leadership and Skills Conference with gold medals in Additive Manufacturing.
“I originally went to SkillsUSA on recommendation from a couple of people — one being Jorge, but I also went because I knew that it would help me understand more of the real-world application to my academics,” Sereno said. “I wanted to be able to differentiate between school and what work would look like.”
Martinez, who originally studied Precision Machining Technology at TSTC, had already competed in SkillsUSA’s state-level competition the previous year, earning a silver medal in the CNC 2-Axis Turning Programmer category.
“It was so much fun, and it kind of challenged me to a point because there wasn’t a competitive environment at school necessarily,” he said of earning his silver medal. “I found the competitive environment made me want to learn more and learn quicker.”
For the Additive Manufacturing category, contestants were required to design a three-dimensional model car that could travel at least one inch. Martinez and Sereno recalled the weeks of preparation, late nights, and testing that went into preparing for the competition.
“A large part of our early ideas had to be taken out because, while they were fun and inventive, they weren’t coherent to the final design that we needed,” Martinez said. “That was a painful spot for us.”
The trial and error proved fruitful not only when Martinez and Sereno’s car traveled the maximum distance of six feet, but also when their hard work was rewarded with first place. As gold medalists, they are eligible to represent TSTC’s Marshall campus at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference to be held June 23-27 in Atlanta, Georgia.
“I was overjoyed because it was nice to have recognition for the amount of work that we put into it,” Sereno said. “I’m still not entirely certain that it’s quite registering for me yet.”
According to onetonline.org, mechanical drafters earn a median salary of $68,070 in Texas, where the number of these jobs was projected to grow 7% between 2020 and 2030.
Drafting and Design is available at TSTC’s Harlingen, Marshall, North Texas and Waco campuses, as well as online. Several Associate of Applied Science degrees and certificates of completion are offered, depending on location.
Registration for TSTC’s summer and fall semesters is underway. For more information, go to tstc.edu.
