The Citrus College automotive program has remained one of the best in the nation for decades, and its recertification with Toyota has created more opportunities for students looking to join the industry.
Jeremy Clark, instructor in the Citrus automotive department, said the redevelopment process began in 2009 and took about two or three years, with the requirement that instructors rewrite curriculum to a new national standard.
Clark said recertification will make students “highly employable.” Students can now begin their careers at dealerships as already-certified technicians.
“Basically, what’ll happen is, when our students graduate from our program, they will leave as a Toyota or Lexus certified technician, so they’re getting factory certification while they go to school here,” Clark said.
The dealer demand for Citrus automotive students is higher than the number of students in the program.
Clark said Toyota didn’t have a “clear-cut standard,” so that’s what needed to be changed.
Recertification was received earlier this year.
“February, they sent a team out to basically do what would be like a mini-accreditation,” Clark said. “They looked at every one of our cars. They looked at all of our worksheets, they looked at all of our instructional resources, everything that we were using. It was a two-day process and then, in the end, we were essentially recertified with Toyota.”
Dennis Korn, who is also an instructor in the Citrus automotive department said recertification was, “intense, long, but it certainly improved the program.”
The national certification students are required to take is the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE). The number of certifications Citrus automotive students have obtained in ASE has increased since the recertification.
There are 36 Toyota-certified schools in the nation and four in California. The other three are in Ventura, Miramar and Cypress.
Citrus automotive student Brianna Fernando approved of the change and said it will benefit her career in the future.
“The first place I’m going to go to is a Toyota dealership,” Fernando said.
Fernando’s goal is to have her own automotive shop.
“I think we have always been a quality program,” Korn said. “I think it just—this step had just made it that much better. We’ve always had good responses from the employers. I mean, they always love our students, It just makes them that much better, it brings a structure to it that’s different than it was before.”
