Jeff Owings has been directly responsible for teaching valuable skills that hundreds of Chattooga High School students carried with them into their chosen trades.  Mr. Owings passed away on Friday after a battle with cancer.

Owings, a pipefitter by trade, taught in the CATE program at Chattooga for nearly three decades.  He was a 1980 graduate of Chattooga himself and began teaching at Chattooga in 1992.  His first year of teaching at the high school, he had just 35 students.  By the end of his teaching career the number of CATE students had grown to well over 100 each year.  He was voted “Teacher of the Year” twice and led the Chattooga High School Welding Team to Fab-Team and Individual State Championships.

Owings and the Chattooga High School Welding program received Industry Certification in 2019. The credentialing is performed by the Construction Education Foundation of Georgia, otherwise known as CEFGA. CEFGA leads the process of program evaluation to ensure that individual programs meet industry standards in the areas of equipment, teacher qualification, lab specifications, curriculum and industry.

As students graduated from the CATE program at Chattooga and went on to successful careers, Mr. Owings would often invite those graduates back to talk with his current students.  In 2011, Mr. Owing told WZQZ News, “The students that come back are professional welders. They were students here not long ago and have continued to develop their welding skills at higher level institutions. They are proof to students that welding is a good career and that it’s possible to take what they learn in class and apply it in the real world and make a very nice living. They provide motivation to current students and they help me by being an extra set of hands and expertise when working with a full class. They also like to show off some of the more difficult welding maneuvers and impress students”.

WZQZ wants to express our condolences to the Owings family and remember the legacy left behind by this beloved Chattooga High School educator.