A Glimpse into Career and Technical Education with Texas Collision Instructors (Part 1)

Many of today’s collision repair professionals obtained their initial education through a local vocational program, but today, vo-tech is a thing of the past. As the industry has changed and adapted to advancing technology, programs have also adapted, rebranding to career and technical education facilities, which makes a lot of sense as these careers have become highly technical.

Yet, at the same time, it seems that fewer and fewer students are pursuing careers in the trades, including collision repair. Are students less interested in the field, or are shops failing to retain young talent? While some shops lament the lack of knowledge that recent graduates possess, few of them are involved with local programs to promote the need to teach the right skills. And without the industry’s involvement, there’s a real danger of many of these programs becoming obsolete – or even closing.

Do you know what’s really happening in today’s trade schools? Probably not, but the teachers dedicated to teaching tomorrow’s technicians sure do! Texas Automotive solicited feedback on these issues and more from four Lone Star collision instructors: Raven Hartkopf (Collin College; Allen), Keith Schieffer (Universal Technical Institute; Houston), Jannifer Stimmel (Texas State Technical College; Waco) and Jeff Wilson (Kingwood Park High School; Kingwood).

Texas Automotive: How long have you been a collision instructor, and how has vo-tech education changed over that time period, especially as it relates to the number of students enrolled in the program?

Raven Hartkopf: I have been a collision instructor for a year and a half. In the short time I’ve been teaching vo-tech, which we now call Career and Technical Education (CTE), we are seeing a shift of interest to ADAS and electric vehicles. We are also seeing more support for online educational materials from industry leaders such as Polyvance. Our program began in the middle of COVID during the fall of 2020, so our enrollment for that cohort was 10 students. Our second year open, the year I started teaching, saw 10 students in our single cohort. This past fall, we had 21 new students, and 12 more joined us this spring. This is the first time we were able to have a spring cohort, which shows the increased interest in our program. We saw a diverse pool of students with this academic year’s cohorts. Out of the 33 new students that joined us, seven are women! Twenty-five percent of our spring cohort are veterans.

Keith Schieffer: I have 51 years of experience in the collision industry, and I’ve been teaching for the past 34 years. At one point, there were about 900 students enrolled in collision technology studies at UTI, but over the last seven or eight years, it’s gone down to around 140. I don’t believe that’s the school’s fault, though. Today’s students understand far less about the auto repair industry than they did 20 years ago, but that’s not necessarily their fault. I believe it’s more of a generational issue, resulting from the fact that the generation before them did not include them in general automotive knowledge or transfer those skills down the line.

Jannifer Stimmel: I started teaching three and a half years ago… and COVID happened just four months into my tenure, changing the amount and the mentality of the students we attract. Just like many jobs struggled to get people to come to work during the height of the pandemic, we had a hard time with students being afraid to come into the school. The semester before COVID, we had three first semester sections, each containing 14 to 17 students. That has changed quite a bit, and though it’s improving (we now have 24 in the first semester of the regular program and eight in co-op), we’re still not back to normal.

Jeff Wilson: I was born and raised in this industry. My father owned a body shop, so once I became certified in collision repair, I was basically free labor until I graduated school. From 1994 until 2006, I taught welding, and then in 2007, I started teaching collision and refinishing in the same district. We have a four-year course which starts with an introduction to the basics of automotive which allows the students to decide on a pathway: mechanics or collision. Collision students spend the second year on nonstructural collision and start their I-CAR certifications, and their third year is spent on refinishing, custom paint and blending. Seniors go on to participate in a work-based practicum via a paid or unpaid internship.

Prior to COVID, there was a great deal of interest in the program – after all, what 16-year-old kid doesn’t want to custom paint a car? I didn’t start having enrollment issues until COVID, when it was extremely hard to give students the hands-on experience they needed when everything got shut down, but it is getting better and better as time goes by. Location also matters. It’s harder for me to get students to sign up for collision classes (and even more difficult to convince them to consider a collision career) because most of my students’ parents expect them to go to college, not to graduate and enter the workforce. I’d guess that around 85 percent of the student body graduating from Kingwood Park ends up going to a post-secondary school of some kind to get a degree. I typically have three or four students (approximately two percent) that go into the industry after graduating from the program, but I’ve placed more students this year than in the past five-plus years. Right now, three of my 16-year-olds are working after school for a local momand-pop shop to get job experience. Unfortunately, we don’t have much luck placing students with dealerships and bigger companies because their insurers won’t allow them to hire students until they’re 18 years old.

TXA: What are your biggest challenges when it comes to attracting more people into the industry, and how is your school trying to increase awareness of the program to attract and retain students?

RH: The biggest challenge is the willingness of shops to be flexible with our students’ schedules. One student interviewed at several shops, and very few were willing to take someone on a part-time basis. If there’s a reason why students don’t end up in the industry while in school, it’s because people don’t want to work around their schedules. In some instances, students have been asked to quit school in order to work full-time, during their interview! It’s disheartening to see that happen because it shows that the shop is more interested in its bottom line and productivity than a potential employee’s aspirations. Frankly, it’s brash of an interviewer to ask someone to do that. Would other companies ask their candidates to quit school halfway through? Do we see that in other industries? Probably not, but those companies value education. More importantly, it’s a red flag for that student and any other student, because they talk amongst each other. Now before I get off my soapbox about this, I do want to clarify that not ALL shops are like this, but they do stand out when I consider challenges.

Another challenge is pay. Some students, especially non-traditional ones, have difficulty transitioning into an industry that may not pay them well to start. When people think of college students, they often think of 18-21 year olds, but the age range for my students spans over 30 years between my youngest and oldest. Some students have families, mortgages and car payments, all of which are skyrocketing.

The Collision Technology department is involved with several local high school auto body advisory committees, so we have a presence there. Any time we get asked to be at a career or college fair at any high school, we try to go. This year, we will be sending collision and refinishing teams to SkillsUSA, which is a first for our program. I’m excited about having students compete because many of our students have never been able to do so. In addition, those who compete at the secondary level have the chance to continue competing as college students. I’m hoping that will attract some students. As for retention, grants have helped pay for students’ tuition costs, but I think more could be done to help supply students with the right tools to join the industry.

KS: I believe that the number of qualified entry level students results from a lack of understanding and training of the school’s recruiters. The recruiters visit with interested parties and their parents to talk about automotive, diesel, aircraft and other options, but if they don’t know enough to talk intelligibly about collision, they can’t sell it. At UTI, they don’t understand collision and everything that’s involved in this field; they still view it as the dirty, dusty place of 25 years ago, filled with minimal technology and low pay. The former recruitment manager understood collision and did an exceptional job explaining the industry’s opportunities to his recruiters, but that was nearly two decades ago. The manager who took over for him didn’t understand the industry, so he didn’t promote it to his team. He recently retired, and I’m hopeful that his replacement will be receptive to learning about the advantages available in collision repair – job placement, salary, technology and benefits have all seen major improvements over the past 20 years, and our recruiters need to embrace this knowledge so they can sell the collision program when they’re talking to students and parents. Since they don’t know how to sell collision as a career path, they just don’t bother attempting it. Until there is a commitment to training recruiters to recruit for the collision industry, we will continue the path we are on.

JS: One of our biggest challenges is probably just the fact that most of this generation doesn’t actually know anything about this industry. Most young people aren’t necessarily working with their hands, but I also don’t know that we’re really reaching people like we could, though we’re trying to get out there and recruit as much as possible. We’re working to develop a social media outreach for our department, and our instructors are attending different events and visiting secondary schools to recruit. Actually, we’re trying to go anywhere to talk to kids and adults, including military bases and different work programs because we’ll take grownups too! Shops have always called, requesting help, but they’re getting a lot more desperate now. We want to help fill the workforce shortage, but we’re facing a ton of challenges ourselves.

JW: I attend and give presentations to the students of all of our feeder schools to help counselors be better prepared to direct students into my