President’s Message: 10,000 Passports Served!

I’m excited to share that the WCA achieved a giant milestone. In February, we entered our 10,000^th candidate into the Passport credentialing program!  The candidate is attending Enka High School in Chandler, North Carolina. Enka High School is one of six schools using the WCA credentialing program in the Buncombe County School District. The other schools are AC Reynolds High School in Ashville, Charles D Owen High School in Black Mountain, Clyde A Erwin High School in Ashville, North Buncombe High School in Weaverville, and TC Roberson High School in Ashville.

To put the magnitude of this achievement in perspective, just consider that we had 5,000 candidates at the end of 2022. We have doubled the use of the WCA Passport credentialing program in the last 3 years. I would like to thank all our WCA teachers and administrators for their continued support of credentialing their students.

Brian Bond

Thank you, Brian!
One of the early Board of Directors of WCA retired at the end of 2025. Dr. Brian Bond, Professor of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia Tech, joined the board in 2009 and has been a guiding force through the development of the WCA Passport credentialing program and its continued growth. Brian served as Chairman of the Board from 2023 thru 2025. I would like to thank Brian for ALL of his dedication and leadership to WCA. His expertise will be missed!

WCA Teacher Scholarships to Attend IWF
WCA is offering 10 Teacher Scholarships for $850 each through the Greg Heuer EDU Scholarship Fund to help offset the costs to attend IWF 2026 this August in Atlanta. Applications are being accepted now through May 15. Learn more and apply.

WCA will be exhibiting at IWF 2026 Booth BC424.

In addition, we will be presenting two workshops:

Wednesday Aug 26 — 9:00AM–11:30AM
“Building & Executing an In-house Training Program for Your Workers”  

Thursday August 27 — 1:00PM–2:00PM
“An Overview of the new WCA Online Employee Training Resources” 

New Passport Credentialing Registry Update
WCA’s new registry for the administration of the Passport credentialing program is now in beta testing and this new streamlined registry should speed the process of recording hands-on evaluations and online testing results for our Educators. This new system is in the second portion of the beta testing and should be ready for release at the end of this school year.

As always, we thank the continued support of our GOLD & SILVER Sponsors!!  These companies truly allow us to continue to develop our programs and accomplish our goal of developing and growing a trained woodworking workforce!

Hope everyone has an enjoyable Spring!

Sincerely,

Scott Nelson
President
Woodwork Career Alliance of North America
snelsonwca@gmail.com