Maritime alumni got feet wet through camps, field days
At Port Houston’s Maritime Field Day last fall, middle schoolers crammed sardine-style inside a 12-person U.S. Coast Guard life raft. Although the raft stayed planted on concrete, the instructor described the rocking motion on the sea.
“In a real emergency,” he said, “everyone would take a seasickness pill immediately to make sure no one got sick. Because if one person throws up, guess what everyone else will be doing?”
At other stations around San Jacinto College’s Maritime Technology and Training Center, students zipped themselves up in immersion suits or hefted 30 pounds of line.
Hands-on is the name of the game at the Maritime Campus, where field days and summer camps allow youth to get their feet wet to explore seafaring careers. In fact, several successful alumni started this way.
Alumnus Allan Rivera
While attending the Stephen F. Austin Maritime High School magnet program, Rivera
participated in two Port Houston field days at the Maritime Campus. Firefighting demos
and boat tours piqued his interest even more.
“I saw how beneficial the Maritime Campus would be for me to start a career,” he said.
In fall 2021, he enrolled. Since Spanish is his first language, Rivera struggled to grasp technical material in English but face-to-face classes and supportive instructors helped.
“The teachers help you understand 100%,” he said. “Before, I had encountered people who didn’t want to help me. [But at San Jac] if I needed to stay extra hours after school, my instructors would help me.”
He also gained plenty of hands-on experience — from chart plotting and radar observing to firefighting and lifting life rafts in the campus pool.
An internship with G&H Towing led to a full-time position with the company after he graduated with his maritime transportation associate degree in May 2023. He is currently an able-bodied seaman, planning to test for his mate’s license this spring.
Alumnus Landon Walters
“Hearing her sea stories from around the world was very interesting and pushed me
even more to get into the industry to gain some sea stories of my own,” he said.
Walters decided setting sail would fit him better than being a landlubber in a cubical.
“After attending the summer camp at San Jac and realizing how many opportunities there were in the industry, it definitely solidified my decision,” he said.
That fall, Walters enrolled, also pursuing the maritime transportation associate degree. During his first year, he interned on a Higman Towing barge, gaining experience working lines and making and breaking tows.
During his second year, Walters traveled with the Economic Alliance Houston Port Region to Washington, D.C., where he sat on a National Maritime Intelligence Center meeting focused on the Port of Houston.
An internship with G&H Towing led to a full-time position after Walters graduated in August 2017. He’s now a mate working to obtain his master’s license and ultimately become a captain.
Solid start, stable career
Camps and field days expose prospective students to the adventurous side of maritime, and San Jac gives them the training they need to excel in the industry. After completing two summer internships on vessels, 100% of associate degree graduates get hired immediately.
As a deckhand on a tug, Rivera has dealt with everything from getting drenched while wrangling a ship in a hurricane to working on holidays and birthdays. But despite some high-adrenaline moments, he would look no further for a stable, sustaining career.
“It’s a career you can build on — and not just on boats,” Rivera said. “You can transfer to the shore side and work your way up. A lot of people see it as a hard industry, but if you put your mind or soul into it, you can accomplish it.”
