WANADA’s Automobile Dealer Education Institute is preparing to welcome a new class of students this semester, as the program’s educators continue to educate and train the next generation of auto technicians in a safe, socially-distant, and protected way.
WANADA would like to thank the numerous dealers who have supported the program, through sponsoring students and also by making charitable contributions to ADEI, which is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Donations to ADEI are tax-deductible, and they help defray some of the association’s costs associated with hosting the program, including providing students with a high-quality set of tools, along with books and other educational materials that help participants thrive and grow into high-quality, reliable service technicians.
Thanks to the great support from the Montgomery County Automotive Trades Foundation and Northern Virginia Community College, ADEI students have still been able to receive in-person training at the auto technician centers on the campuses of NOVA and Montgomery College.
Dealership demand for ADEI students continues to be strong, and there was actually a waitlist for participants this coming semester. As a result, some dealerships that were not sponsoring students previously have since joined or re-joined the program in prior months. None of this would have been possible without the great support of our dealership members, our supporting educational institutions and, of course, the participating students themselves, who continue to work hard even in highly challenging circumstances.
To adapt to those health and safety challenges, ADEI students are being trained in smaller groups, with more spacing in the garages than in pre-pandemic times, with a greater emphasis on virtual learning in their non-automotive academic studies. But importantly for their vocational training, and for the students’ ability to have the necessary education to be able to establish a full-time career at a dealership, they are still getting the same amount of in-person technician training that students received prior to the pandemic, just with a far greater emphasis on social distancing, mask-wearing, and surface cleaning.
The association would also like to thank Erik Falk and Billy Painter, WANADA’s in-house recruitment advisors in Maryland and Northern Virginia, along with Steve Boden from the Montgomery County ATF, for helping the program continue even as many in-person activities have remained shuttered across the region.
For more information on ADEI, please visit adei-programs.org. You may also contact Joe Koch, WANADA’s Vice President of Operations, at jk@wanada.org for more information on ADEI and the various ways you can support this immensely valuable program.
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