The community college conducted a study and determined that there was a need within the region to prepare professional auto collision technicians, according to Chris McCullough, associate vice president of workforce at American River College.
"This labor market needs 40 new auto collision techs every year," she says. "The medium wage is about $24 per hour, so it is a high-wage, high-skill job that is growing in demand faster than the average. Technicians need professional training to fill those positions."
The college is taking advantage of state funding, $750,000 in grants and partnerships with the Central Valley New Car Dealers Association and the Sacramento County Office of Education to offer the programs, which will begin this fall. It hired Donald Joe, owner of Fabrication Specialties, a Sacramento-based collision repair shop that also builds custom cars, as a professor in collision repair.
"We call him our million-dollar investment," McCullough says. "We hired a full-time faculty member, so we are committed to making this program work. Don will run the program and add more classes as needed."
Joe said he is excited about starting the program and knows that it will end up helping businesses like his that need skilled workers. "I've been working in this industry for 32 years and it seems like there is less interest now among young people in pursuing collision repair as a career choice," Joe says. "People in the industry say that we've needed a program like this for years."
It's a huge burden on shops to train their own employees in collision repair. "It takes a lot of time to train employees, and you have to pay them while they learn," he says. "Most shop owners find it easier to do the work themselves than go to the time and expense of training somebody new."
That's especially true because many newly trained employees often don't stay too long with the company that trained them. So even if companies make that investment in time and training, they often end up back in the same position of needing skilled workers.
"There are a lot of trade schools out there that are taking advantage of this opportunity and capturing this growth, but those schools tend to be very expensive," Joe says. "Our program only costs about $40 per class plus books."
Providing affordable training in high-demand jobs is a key mission of California's community colleges, according to McCullough. "Our job is to provide a skilled workforce," she says. "Employers don't have time to do the training, and it costs them money and takes them away from their work. There are two million students in 10 California community colleges, and we have to make sure tuition is affordable."
The college will offer six courses during the day and six in the evenings to accommodate a variety of work schedules. Some of the classes that will be offered throughout the year include automotive collision I and II, estimating I and II, structural panel and component repair, non-structural repair, refinishing technology and MIG welding.
"Both estimating classes that we will offer this fall already are full, which is very encouraging," McCullough says. "We think we will have about 75 to 100 students enrolled in all the collision repair courses this fall. I'm very happy with those numbers."
Joe said the courses will include a lot of lab time to give students that much needed hands-on experience. "Each class will have one hour of classroom instruction and a three-hour lab," he says. The college is renting lab facilities from the Sacramento County Office of Education, which recently scaled back its collision repair program.
"We can teach students to I-CAR standards and then students could take the I-CAR classes," Joe continues. "We also can prepare them for the ASE certification tests."
Some vendors have volunteered to provide paint for the course, and the college is looking for more vendor donations. Companies that want to get involved with the college's program should call McCullough at (916) 484-8011 ext. 8622.