Wrenches & computers: Fanshawe College program keeps pace with auto change

It was a solid costume idea, except for one detail: The word “mechanic” fell out of use in the auto industry in about 1980, when fuel injection and electronics arrived.

“I was a grease monkey for Halloween and nobody knew who I was,” she said sardonically.

Heisler – her name rhymes with Chrysler – is the face of the automotive-service technician program at Fanshawe College in London, one of many community colleges in Ontario training a new generation to repair vehicles.

Cars loom large in the North American lifestyle, but their technology – unlike an earlier era – has raced ahead of most owners’ understanding.

Wrenches & computers: Fanshawe College program keeps pace with auto change
DAN BROWN Updated: January 22, 2019

Hans Reimer is the coordinator of auto program at Fanshawe College in London, Ont. on Tuesday January 8, 2019. Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network

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Rae Heisler loves working on cars so much, she dressed up as a mechanic for Halloween.

It was a solid costume idea, except for one detail: The word “mechanic” fell out of use in the auto industry in about 1980, when fuel injection and electronics arrived.

“I was a grease monkey for Halloween and nobody knew who I was,” she said sardonically.

Heisler – her name rhymes with Chrysler – is the face of the automotive-service technician program at Fanshawe College in London, one of many community colleges in Ontario training a new generation to repair vehicles.

Cars loom large in the North American lifestyle, but their technology – unlike an earlier era – has raced ahead of most owners’ understanding.

At 21, the apprentice technician is in her second of three years in the program. Already, she’s got a job at Finch Chevrolet in London.

“I like engines,” she said of her passion for cars.

For the career that stretches out in front of her, however, Heisler – and others like her – will have to know much more than how internal combustion works.

“Mostly, it’s just keeping up with changing technology,” Hans Reimer said of the job awaiting young people like Heisler when they graduate.

Reimer is the professor who coordinates the automotive-service technician programs in the school’s cavernous Z Building; the school of transportation technology and apprenticeship moved into the new digs in 2011, a sign of how in-demand auto education is.

Many of Ontario’s other 23 community colleges have similar programs, with schools partnering with different auto makers to offer brand-specific training. If you want a career working on General Motors products, for instance, you’d want to look into the courses Fanshawe offers.

Heisler is one of about 140 AST students, while all of the programs combined – auto parts, auto body, agricultural equipment, truck and coach maintenance – have more than 550 students.

Asked if it’s more important for his charges to know how to use a wrench or a computer, Reimer said, “You have to do both.”

That’s because cars have gone from being simply a means of transportation (and self-expression) into the realm of high technology: gas-powered vehicles are giving way to hybrid and electric vehicles, giving way in turn to self-driving vehicles and then . . . who knows?

The pace of change in the auto sector has never been more rapid, Reimer says.

“More so than we’ve ever seen,” he said. “(Students) have to be able to interpret data.”

Most classroom teaching is about helping apprentices learn to teach themselves whatever new technological twists are coming down the pipeline, he said. Cars aren’t like they used to be; every major system in a modern car has wires attached to it, he said.

“Everything’s evolving so quickly. The big thing today is connectivity,” Reimer said. That means today’s students are tomorrow’s auto-didacts.

Back in the engine lab, which is as voluminous as a football field, students such as Heisler have automobiles such as a Chevy Volt, Ford F-150 and a Honda Civic Hybrid on which to learn.

Of course, Heisler’s education began years before she came to Fanshawe; She took 10 specialized courses before she’d even left H.B. Beal secondary school in London.

“I took every single automotive course I could,” she said.

And does she believe self-driving cars are the wave of the future, able to navigate roads and streets for themselves without human help?

“They’re already doing that,” she said.

Source: https://bit.ly/2T4fBiw