The Collision Repair Education Foundation announced that Alcoa Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Alcoa, awarded the Collision Repair Education Foundation a $40,000 grant that will provide educational and aluminum repair training to post-secondary collision instructors and students.
Like this article? Sign up to receive our weekly news blasts here.Collision instructors and students will have the opportunity to apply for the aluminum repair training grant as part of the foundation’s spring 2013 student scholarship/tool grant opportunities. Seventeen collision instructor/student pairs will be selected to attend aluminum repair technical training at the I-CAR Tech Centre in Appleton, Wis., during the summer of 2013.
”The work of the Collision Repair Education Foundation is spot-on with our desire to educate and train people for important STEM-related trades including automotive repair,” said Randall Scheps, Director of Marketing for Alcoa Automotive. “As the mix of materials in this market continues to change as consumers seek more fuel efficient vehicles, this work is even more important. Though it will also make it evident that working with and repairing aluminum is actually no more difficult that any other material – it’s just different.”
Collision Repair Education Foundation Executive Director Clark Plucinski said, “As more and more of today’s and future vehicles are being constructed with aluminum, it is crucial that repair professionals complete aluminum repair technical training in order to repair consumer’s collision damaged properly. Through this Alcoa grant, not only will instructors gain technical training that they can bring back to their classroom for additional students but the students will have completed industry recognized, I- CAR aluminum repair training making them more employable to the industry. I thank Alcoa for their support and we look forward to working together with them and I-CAR on training the future repair professionals of the collision industry.”
Additional information on Alcoa can be found at www.alcoa.com. Collision Repair Education Foundation spring 2013 scholarship and tool grant applications will be available online at www.CollisionEducationFoundation.org in early January.
For additional questions about the aluminum training grant and/or the Collision Repair Education Foundation can be directed to Director of Development Brandon Eckenrode at 847.463.5244 or Brandon.Eckenrode@ed- foundation.org.
