CAPA Donates $100,000 to Collision Engineering Career Alliance

The Certified Automotive Parts Association has donated $100,000 to the Collision Engineering Career Alliance, the nonprofit that runs a two-year collision repair technician apprenticeship program at seven community colleges, the alliance said.

“Supporting Collision Engineering means shaping tomorrow’s workforce and contributing to the health of our industry,” said Gerry Poirier, CAPA board chair. “We are fully aligned with the organization’s mission to help fill the talent pipeline with highly skilled technicians. This includes helping to remove barriers for more students across the U.S. to have access to a career in collision repair.”

Donations to the alliance fund student certifications, assessments, tuition reimbursement and other quality-of-life needs, the organization said. It said the money will support efforts to fill more than 73,000 collision repair job openings expected through 2029.

The Collision Engineering program is a two-year associate degree built on a hybrid, work-based learning model in which students rotate every eight weeks between classroom instruction and paid apprenticeships at collision repair facilities. The alliance secured U.S. Department of Labor approval of that model as the national standard for training and certifying collision engineering technicians in March, a designation that lets graduates earn a federally recognized Collision Engineering Technician Certificate.

The program is active at College of Lake County in Grayslake, Ill.; Contra Costa College in San Pablo, Calif.; Parkland College in Champaign, Ill.; Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Neb.; Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, N.C.; North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, N.D.; and El Camino College in Torrance, Calif.

Information on supporting the program is available at beacollisionengineer.com.