Osseo Students Get to Rebuild a Mustang Engine
Osseo Senior High is partnering with a car company to make its auto shop classes more in-line with the kinds of jobs today’s mechanics do. The first step of the partnership was Wednesday as representatives of Ford Motor Company presented a V-6 engine the automaker donated to the school.
The program is meant to get kids trained in auto repair early. Ford reps say that’s especially important today because cars are very complicated. Not many do their own repair work. That means their kids aren’t learning at home like they used to.
Lack of “Shade tree Education”
“Kids at that point had a parent or grandparent that was always mechanically inclined,” says Ford’s Christopher Seebeck. “You see that less and less these days. So they don’t have that natural hands-on ability from working in the garage with dad or grandpa.”
In addition to working in class, kids will have access to a Ford program that lets them job-shadow dealership service techs. And as they get older, they can even get paid to train at the dealership while going to tech school.
Students More Employable
Shop teacher Andrew Kavanagh says the program will have a huge impact on their employability. “This allows them to walk into a job interview with Ford-certified training. So it puts them a leg up against anyone else. If you walk in without this certificate, the dealership’s gonna have to pay you to take this training.”
That’s why the program doesn’t stop with just the engine – Ford reps say future plans are to donate transmissions and even whole cars.
That’s got kids like Senior Hunter Askland excited. He hopes to open his own garage after college, and says learning on modern engines will make a big difference. “The newest car we have is about 2006. And that’s, what, 13 years old. So having something from 2019’s pretty cool because technology has changed and evolved a lot since then.”
Osseo Senior High School
