Grant to Help Revive College Auto Center

Victor Quiroz, an automotive student at East Los Angeles College, often buries his head under the hood of his pickup truck trying to figure out what makes the engine rumble and groan.

“We’re learning car mechanics basically by the book,” Quiroz said. “There’s little hands-on training. I can only learn so much from what I see [from my car].”

Because of a cutback in state funds in 1994, the college’s Automotive Technology Center could only offer minimal training to about 100 students enrolled in the two-year vocational program.

Now with about $600,000 in state funds approved in July, the college has purchased equipment that will be used to expand its educational program.

Students and faculty at East Los Angeles College honored state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte) at a special reception this week for her efforts in securing state funds.

“We’ll be able to expand our educational services to serve more students in the community by virtue of long-awaited funding,” said Ernest Moreno, the college’s president.

“By the end of fall we expect all the new equipment to be in place,” Moreno said. “We hope to bring [the program] to a state-of-the art automotive technology program with a substantial number of new tools, a modernized lecture hall and up-to-date engines.”

The Automotive Technology Center houses seven laboratories, a lecture hall and 11 service stations for cars.

“[The new equipment] should give me more hands-on training,” Quiroz said. “We’ll be able to take apart engines and study the parts carefully.”

When it was started in 1973, the automotive facility operated from a single room and had just a handful of students. In 1994, the doors of an automotive technology building opened to provide more specialized training and accommodate more students.