The ASE Education Foundation and CDK Global will continue its partnership in 2023 as CDK Global will support the foundation’s efforts with a $20,000 donation to help increase diversity in the automotive service industry and expand outreach to younger students.
The ASE Education Foundation works with over 2,300 high schools and colleges and 5,000 instructors nationwide, promoting industry-developed training program standards, entry-level credentials and work-based learning. The donation from CDK Global will be used to promote automotive career opportunities to underrepresented groups and students at the elementary and middle school levels.
“Our efforts positively impact the education of well over 100,000 students each year. Thanks to the generosity of CDK Global, we will be able to enhance our programs in the coming year,” said Mike Coley, ASE Education Foundation president. “While we continue to promote automotive career opportunities to high school students, recent research underscores the need to expand our outreach to two additional audiences, students in younger grades and their influencers, including parents, relatives, teachers and guidance counselors.”
Some of the new initiatives the ASE Education Foundation has planned for the coming year include the development and implementation of grade-appropriate lessons and projects that teachers can use to supplement math and science curriculums. These programs would demonstrate some basic, and not-so-basic, concepts found in automotive technology and would include information about various automotive career opportunities, emphasizing the fact that they are accessible and open to everyone.
In addition, age-group-appropriate activities will be developed that schools, as well as community groups like Boys and Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, can use outside of the classroom. These activities would be hands-on projects that would educate and inspire young people to continue to explore automotive careers.
“We value our partnership with the ASE Education Foundation in its continued efforts to expand the talent pipeline of automotive service technicians through mentorship and hands-on learning programs,” said Brian MacDonald, president and chief executive officer, CDK Global. “The new outreach initiatives will provide valuable opportunities to young students and increase diversity in the upcoming workforce.”
The ASE Education Foundation has worked with CDK Global since 2019. With their support, the Foundation performed a program-wide audit in 2021, conducted by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (napequity.org). The results of that audit showed that the ASE Education Foundation is poised to be a positive influence in increasing the number of minorities and women in the automotive industry.
“The automotive service industry offers multiple career opportunities beyond the service bay, and most minorities are currently underrepresented,” said Coley. “This is especially true for women, who comprise 47 percent of the workforce but only two percent of service technicians and less than 10 percent of all positions in the automotive repair and maintenance industry. With CDK Global’s continued support, we are making great strides in addressing the diversity of the automotive service industry.”