FOUNDATIONS - Year 1
Foundations is a requirement for all first year students at Harmel Academy and trains men in the fundamentals of skilled work and spiritual maturity, whether they intend to continue on in the study of a specific skilled trade, to defer their college entrance to gain skills helpful to put themselves through college, or simply to become an excellent, capable, and responsible man.
FOR MEN READY TO LAUNCH
Many young men find themselves uncertain about what to do after high school, unsure of “the right path”, or sadly, discouraged by the opportunities presented them. With no clear purpose or ability to make good use of the adventure the Lord is calling him to, a young man may fall into the snare of squandering the gifts God has given him.
Foundations Year is designed to give such men a year of focus, discipline, and community, where they can learn how to become competent captains of their futures, their careers, and their education.
The tool we use is training and experience in skilled work, but the goal is to help a young man transition to an intentional, mature, and self-reliant future.
Foundations Topics
First-year program · Required of all Harmel students
Length: Two semesters, residential — classes two days a week, work two to three
What the Foundation year is
Most men leave high school without having touched the trades at all. Foundations is the year that fixes that — and the year a man finds out which trade is his.
He spends it with tools in his hands. Welding, machining, basic electrical, construction, carpentry, HVAC and plumbing, small engines, automotive — not as demonstrations but as real work on real job sites, because the programs here are project-based. Alongside the shop work he takes math for tradesmen, blueprint reading and CAD, workplace communication and safety: the things that make a man employable across the trades rather than in one.
He also takes God and Man at Work, Harmel’s signature humanities course, where philosophy, theology and literature get argued out in Socratic conversation. The aim isn’t to make him a scholar. It’s to form a man who builds the world around him and builds the Kingdom while he does it — and who brings thought, contemplation and real leisure to the people around him.
And he discerns. Harmel’s second year runs along three tracks — an apprenticeship, a license, or a certification — and Foundations is where a man works out which one is his, or whether it’s a trade at all. Some go on to a second year here. Some go straight into the workforce. Some go to college better equipped and carrying less debt than their classmates. Harmel counts all three.
How the Foundations Year works:
Foundations is a residential year. A man lives on campus in a household, attends classes two days a week, and works off campus the other two or three — earning while he learns, which is how Harmel men pay a real share of their own way.
It is the gate to everything else. Every second-year program at Harmel — machinist, machine builder, tool and die, electrician, builder, welder — requires Foundations first. Nobody skips it.
The second year is not automatic. Students are invited by faculty into a specific second-year program. The invitation rests on what a man shows during Foundations: his work, his judgment, and how he carries himself in community.
Alongside the trade. A Foundations student also completes God and Man at Work I & II, Work as Service and Stewardship I & II, and formation seminars. The trade is what he will be paid for. The rest is what he will be.
Specialized course work
- Automotive/Predictive and Preventative Maintenance
- Basic Electricity
- Basic Safety
- Basic Welding
- Blueprint Reading, Schematics, and Computer-Aided Drafting
- Introduction to Carpentry and Home Maintenance
- Introduction to Computers/Workplace Communication
- Introduction to Construction
- Introduction to HVAC and Plumbing
- Introduction to Small Engines
- Machine Tool Operations
- Math for Tradesmen
- Work as Service and Stewardship I & II
- God and Man at Work I & II
- Formation Seminar I & II
Your Future. Hands-On.
Harmel Academy programs are project-based. This means that instead of spending the majority of the time in classrooms or instructional labs, men will learn on custom job sites. You learn by building, wiring, welding, and otherwise creating real stuff.
“Harmel Academy is a place to grow and flourish, to be able to look at life in the trades and also as a Catholic working man…. It’s an easy way to build your strengths, and even find your weaknesses.”