By Mike Davey
Hamilton, Ontario — May 18, 2016 — The shortage of skilled tradespeople has a profound impact on the collision repair industry as a whole. For the last few years, Toronto’s Tropicana Employment Services has been helping to fill the gap with its Autobody and Collision Damage Repairer Pre-apprenticeship program. Repairers and suppliers have helped to support the program almost since its inception. CARSTAR has been one of the programs strongest supporters. Recently, the company has announced it will lend support through a new scholarship initiative.
“We’re very proud to be presenting a new award on an annual basis to a student the program each year. It will be called the CARSTAR Best in Class award,” said Collin Welsh, CARSTAR’s Regional Development Manager for GTA and Eastern Ontario.
Determining which of the students in a given year is “Best in Class” will depend on how well they score on certain criteria. The students will be ranked in four areas: grade point average, attendance, interaction and leadership. Each of these criteria will form up to 25 percent of the total score. The last two, interaction and leadership, are subjective marks that will be given out by the students’ instructors.
Each of the scores in these areas will be added together to come up with a final score out of 100. The student with the highest overall score will receive the CARSTAR Best in Class scholarship at the Tropicana Auto Body graduation ceremony. This year’s graduation is set to take place on September 1 in Toronto.
“‘Best in Class’ is a CARSTAR expectation, and it’s in line with the expectation our stores are measured on and where the bar is set,” says Welsh. “We designed the student measurement to equal the efforts of a top performing student.”
The CARSTAR Best in Class Scholarship will include money, tools and a plaque or trophy to recognize the recipient.
For more information on the program, please visit tropicanaemployment.ca/services/pre-apprenticeship.
