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about it, he says. “We were not getting new interest in our industry and, at the time, high schools were not concentrating on technical jobs—so we poached talent from one another. We were all Type A’s that preferred to go it alone instead of getting in the boat and rowing to safety.”


KENT RITCHEY, PRESIDENT, GREATER MEMPHIS AUTO DEALERS ASSOCIATION


Not anymore. The growing tech shortage was enough of a jolt to convince a majority that throwing thousands at even more on-the-job training and factory visits wouldn’t yield the crop of qualified techs needed to outpace the number of veterans exiting the industry—or the onslaught of future technology and trends. “For us, it had become about self-preservation,” says the head of the 103-year-old asso- ciation. “Over the years, we had accumulated a lot of capital and we finally came to a point where we all agreed to agree, and the lightbulb came on.”


MOORE TECH GRADUATES WILL BE ABLE TO WORK AT ANY DEALERSHIP AFTER TAKING CLASSES IN THE SCHOOL’S STATE-OF-THE-ART SERVICE DEPARTMENT, SAYS GMADA’S PRESIDENT KENT RITCHEY.


The consensus: GMADA had to take the lead in producing Mem- phis’ next generation of qualified service techs, which also meant building a program to educate them. After an exhaustive search for a partner with the resources to help it open an automotive techni- cal school, the association broke ground on Moore Tech Automotive Technician School last May. “We started by going to every public school and government institution in the area that was doing tech,” says Ritchey, but none of them had the means to house GMADA’s vision, a state-of-the-art facility modeled after a modern car dealership and service center. “We’ve got tech schools in the area but they don’t turn out students that can handle the level of sophistication that’s being manufactured today,” adds Ritchey. “Most of the time when a car comes to us, the first thing we do is plug it into a handheld computer. As cars become more autonomous, the need for more skilled technicians will become even greater.”


48 FEDA News & Views


So the association moved on to Plan B, which included purchas- ing an old Honda dealership that had been vacant for about five years, and transforming it into the first-of-its-kind automotive service training facility in Memphis. It also approached the president of the William R. Moore College of Tech- nology about participating in a joint initiative to open the school. Decades earlier, the college had been forced to close its automo- tive-tech program because of a lack of funding.


“If you’re in the HVAC business, or the plumbing or welding busi- ness, you know Moore Tech,” says Ritchey. “They run seven trade schools in Memphis and they’ve been doing this for 100 years.” Which is why GMADA gave the college $500,000 in seed money to operate the joint venture and asked one of Moore Tech’s former directors to serve as its director of automotive service technology.


A First in Memphis Last September, Moore Tech Au- tomotive enrolled 30 students in its inaugural class. Currently, they’re in a temporary facility while the last phase of its $3 million renovation project is completed. Full enroll- ment is expected to open sometime this spring and attract as many as 200 students, says Ritchey. In addi- tion to a two-year associate degree, graduates can earn certifications in eight categories. Students, who have completed one semester, also will have the opportunity to intern at a Memphis dealership. The tuition to attend for both years is roughly $21,000. The nearest for-profit tech schools, in St. Louis and Dallas, cost twice as much. “In their second year, students can apply for a local gov- ernment empowerment program to subsidize part of their tuition,” says Ritchey, who is hoping to convince the state of Tennessee that Moore Tech Automotive meets the require- ments for inclusion in its Tennes-


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