business backgrounder | education & workforce
Auto-shop programs at local schools and vocational centers
can be fertile ground for service recruiters, who look for young
people with an aptitude for cars. Some of Shoreline’s partner
dealers hire beginners right out of high school, then have the
student enroll in the PATC program.
Johnny Kamacho and Sam Flaxman, both in their first quarter
of the program, consult the technical library on a laptop as they
complete a 12-page checklist on the transmission in front of them.
“I don’t learn things unless I do it myself,” Flaxman explains.
Kamacho, who just started his job as a lot attendant at Lynnwood
Honda, says that with the skills he’s picked up in the program
so far, he’s been able to chip in at the shop when someone
needs help.
The Honda training program is full of self-directed
learning exercises, instructor Bob Biesiedzinksi says. “We
try to replicate real-world scenarios where a vehicle has a
fault, and students have to go through a diagnostic process
to figure it out.”
The same was on display down the line in the Toyota section,
where Jeff Cromwell had set up a panel with nine switches under
the hood of a Venza. He starts the car, then lets a visitor flip a
switch — any switch — in order to look and listen for changes. The
otherwise healthy engine started to shake, its rumble slowed. Why?
Cromwell had shut the fuel injector off — but that was for students
to find out.
“The littlest things can be overlooked,” Cromwell says, as a
student reports his diagnosis of another car. After much trial and
error, a blown fuse was identified as the culprit. “The number-one
thing dealers look at is efficiency.”
That focus on detail, on process and routine, drew Faris Hanhaz
to switch to Toyota from the General Service Technician program.
“They put you through every trick they can,” says Hanhaz, who
works Fridays and Saturdays during the spring quarter at Lexus of
Bellevue and will work full-time there during the summer. “But by
the end of the day, when you get
done, you feel like you know so
much more.”
www.shoreline.edu/auto
“They put you through every trick they can, but
by the end of the day, when you get done, you
feel like you know so much more.”
— Faris Hanhaz, a student in the Professional Automotive
Training Center
Shorewood High School auto shop teacher Wes Proudlove
says his students have taken both paths — straight to industry, or
straight to college. Operating a garage at Shorewood, Proudlove
says, gives students experience with everything from customer
relations to diagnostics.
Where a program like Shoreline comes in, he says, is giving
students the up-to-date factory-specific training they wouldn’t
get at a general-service shop. Proudlove hopes more dealership
service managers recognize the experience these younger
technicians bring to the job.
At the Shoreline PATC lab, students cluster around cars and
hover over computers. One group, enrolled in the three-quarter
General Service Technician program — designed for entrylevel students without an automotive background or declared
manufacturer interest — ticks off a series of electrical tasks.
In the Honda classroom, eight students are dismantling, then
reassembling a controlled variable transmission — an activity that
spans three or four six-hour days.
Sean Hughen, a student at Shoreline Community College's Professional
Automotive Training Center-Dealer Training Academy, uses diagnostic
equipment to check the automatic transmission system on a late-model
Honda Element.
General Motors donated a 2014 Corvette Stingray to Shoreline Community
College, where it sits in a showroom at the college's Professional
Automotive Training Center.
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