Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990 TAG: 9005110197
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA LOPEZ BADEN EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sporting leather tool belts and the veteran air that came only after a full morning of on-the-job experience, Ron Lumsden, 17, and Paul Lukas, 16, each hoisted one end of a board.
Before they took their first step, Dennis Drewry, of Lionberger Construction, stopped them for a little impromptu instruction in the fine art of board lifting.
Because Ron was standing on the right side of the board and Paul on the left, he said, "the board's working against you. Every step's going to be a struggle.
As the boys listened, Drewry told them to stand on the same side of the board when lifting, "so you work together."
And that's how it went for more than 150 Roanoke County vocational education students who spent Tuesday and Wednesday being paired with professional construction workers, electricians, auto mechanics, landscapers and carpenters.
The two-day "student shadowing" program was aimed at giving first-year vocational students a taste of what the working world is like, said Joan Farley, industrial cooperative training coordinator for Arnold R. Burton Center for Technology.
"We're very excited," she said. "We've never done this on such a large scale before. I think the kids really enjoy getting out there and seeing how things are done by professionals."
At Hart Oldsmobile, that meant tagging along with mechanics as they demonstrated the latest in electronic diagnostics for cars with on-board computers.
Wayne Hughes slid into a celery-green Oldsmobile and plugged what looked like a hand-held calculator under the steering column.
Within seconds, he measured the air intake, throttle position, barometric pressure, manifold temperature and mass air flow.
"That's it," he said triumphantly. The mass air flow sensor had gone bad, letting too much air flow through the engine and causing it to die.
Hughes said he has come to rely on sophisticated electronic diagnostics as much as his trusty wrenches.
"Some of these kids don't realize how much things have changed," he said, scrutinizing the car's electronic readout the way a doctor would examine X-rays. "You know they got air bag systems now with a separate computer that will tell you how fast you were going when you got into a wreck, which wheel locked up, everything. It's awesome."
Brian Yeager spent much of Wednesday finding out that working on modern-day cars is just a little different from tinkering with his '67 Cutlass Supreme.
"This is a lot more complicated than my car," he said, eyeing a new Delta 88 that had come in for power-steering work.
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to take electronics," he said, "but there's so much of it, I guess I'll have to. I'll have to think about it."
Carl Hart, controller for Hart Olds, said that is the single biggest difference in auto mechanics.
"We've got cars with four separate on-board computers now," he said. "These kids will need lots of electronics. They'll need to read well, know their figures.
"You have to be smart to be a mechanic now," he said. "The days when you could just throw kids into vocational ed because they couldn't do anything else are over, at least as far as auto mechanics is concerned. You can't even be a mechanic without electronics anymore."
Hart said he agreed to pair the students with his mechanics "because they need to find out how complicated and technical this field has become. We want to expose them to what it's really like."
And if everything works out, the kids wind up like Steve Sweeney, who graduated from Burton's vocational program in 1988, worked a few months at a gas station and then landed a job at the dealership.
Now he's getting ready to spend a week in Florida - on the company.
"They're sending me to a special school to learn to work on Daihatsus," Sweeney said, referring to the Japanese import. "It's a good job."
Sweeney said he's glad to see first-year students being taken to job sites.
"It's good for them," he said. "I wish they'd done that with us. I felt I was really well prepared at Burton, but no matter how much you learn in class, it's always different out on the job."
by CNB