Back to Work grant helps Emily Griffith automotive student excel
By Noelle Riley
November 1, 2022
Success stories are everywhere at Emily Griffith Technical College.
Take the College of Trades, Industry, and Professional Studies for example. It boasts programs like computer networking, welding, and water quality management, to name a few. It also has a robust automotive services program, from which student Tiffany Smith just received her automotive certificate.
Several factors contributed to Tiffany’s success. One, was her ability to finish school with a Back to Work scholarship that the Emily Griffith Foundation secured for students.
Before completing her program, Tiffany had already started her own business, called Sapphire Phoenix.
“I do diagnostics for vehicles that maybe the shop doesn’t have access to a good scanner,” she says.
Tiffany takes her scanner to shops to help mechanics figure out precisely what’s wrong with vehicles. Additionally, she also helps install breathalyzers in cars.
“I have a contract with Intoxalock. It’s the Interlocken system for people who get DUIs,” she says.
She installs, maintains, and uninstalls the systems for the company. She also does general repairs on cars and other automotive fixes.
The skills she learned at Emily Griffith Technical College gave her the knowledge she needs to do this type of work, she says. When in class, she learned a plethora of important skills, including how to take apart a transmission and rebuild it.
“There’s a precise way that you have to build a transmission in order for it to turn,” she says. “So learning that and keeping it in order and placing every piece is very intricate work, but it’s very rewarding when it works out.”
And she brags about Emily Griffith Technical College all the time.
“When people tell me they want to go back to school, I tell them about this place. I even told my boys about it. And my oldest boy, he’s 15 now and he doesn’t really like school. I don’t really like his school either,” she says. “So he’s thinking about coming here when he turns 16 to get his GED. And my daughter came here. Turns out my mom and my dad came here. I didn’t even know.”
She has three kids. A 28-year-old daughter and two sons. One son is 10 and the other is 15. Her daughter earned her GED from Emily Griffith when she was 16. Tiffany touts how the college helps those who maybe don’t want to or can’t go the traditional route of graduating high school and getting a four-year college degree.
She’s also incredibly grateful for the money she received from the COSI Back to Work grant. It’s helped her in so many ways.
“Mostly it was to pay my bill, keep me in school, to get my vehicles going and to get my vehicle going, and my boy's clothes and just the necessities that we really needed,” she says.
Tiffany thoroughly enjoyed her courses, especially when teachers would bring in various company experts to talk about vehicles. That included RTD, Toyota, and several different businesses that were offering employment. It’s that kind of exposure that helps students at Emily Griffith succeed. She’s now taking on the world and trying to be an inspiration to her children.
“I want them to see that no matter what life throws at you, you can pick yourself up and dust yourself off and if you have to go in a different direction you can. Nothing is final. If you have one more day, you can make something happen,” she says.
Gideon Geisel is proud of how the College works swiftly to help students complete their education and quickly get them into the workforce. He’s the Dean of the College of Trades, Industry, and Professional Studies.
“We’re evaluated very simply, which is program completion and job placement. And we’re very, very good at it. We’ve been doing it for 106 years,” he says.
Tiffany is a good example, and he’s constantly in awe of how well students, instructors, and administrative staff create success stories. Geisel often finds himself going to classrooms and watching students learn hands-on.
“When you walk in and you see them rebuilding a transmission, taking apart an engine — you know with direction from the instructor but it’s by and large very independent — you know that we’re doing the right work,” he says.
To keep the programs successful, Emily Griffith works with industry professionals. This year, Schomp Automotive partnered with the College to develop an Automotive apprenticeship program
“You want to make sure you’re providing industry with what they need. So for a company like Schomp to engage with us and create opportunities with them, it just means the world because, again, it’s just about opportunity,” Geisel says.
Partnering with dealerships, auto shops, and other companies is key to hands-on experience that students need for success after graduation.
“They might not know, ‘Oh a dealership — that’s going to look different than if I work for an independent garage.’ Another company that we’ve started to engage with a little bit is United Airlines, and students wouldn’t know that they have ground equipment and so they have positions that are ground service technicians,” he says, adding that the College is excited about working with both United Airlines and Schomp Automotive.
Jim Lane is the program manager for technical apprenticeships and recruiting at Schomp Automotive.
“My job is kind of split into two with the ultimate goal of eventually, obviously, to increase the labor pool for us, and to bring folks on as technicians,” he says, adding that there’s been a huge dip in the number of automotive employees over the years.
“Our industry, over the last 20 years, has suffered a pretty large shortage of professional technicians.” Currently, the automotive industry wouldn’t be able to come out of that technician decrease without Emily Griffith Technical College, he says. “I think Emily Griffith is critical, not only to our automotive group, but anyone in the automotive industry.”
Schomp also says scholarships, like the Back to Work grant, are crucial to the success of technical college students.
“Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in this industry, particularly on the hiring and human resources side of everything, and the stories, the very real stories of people who without those monies don’t have access, are everywhere,” he says.
And for Tiffany Smith, who is extremely humble, she says the Back to Work grant, in part, helped her complete her program. Ann Leonard is the student success coordinator at Emily Griffith, and she helped Tiffany land the Back to Work Grant.
“If it wasn’t for her and the grant, I really don’t think I would’ve made it,” Tiffany says.
Noelle Riley is a podcast producer with the Emily Griffith Foundation. The next episode will feature an Emily Griffith Technical College student in the nursing program who also received Back to Work money.
For more information on Emily Griffith programs, visit www.emilygriffith.edu
To find out more about how you can help Emily Griffith students, visit www.egfoundation.org
The beats for the podcast were composed by Just Emcee, and podcast cover art was designed by Sara Grossman/CODE Marketing.