CLC's apprenticeship program offers career options

Ingleside native Olivia Peterson, 28, is no stranger to higher education, nor starting a new career.

After graduating high school, she pursued a bachelor's degree, and then a master's, in music with the goal of becoming a professional classical musician.

It's a world she's been a part of most of her life, even participating in the College of Lake County Wind Ensemble when she was about 12 years old. However, preparing for the career, and actually taking part in it, ended up being two very different things.

"Once I got out into the real world, I was having a little trouble finding work and I ended up working in a library to make ends meet," said Peterson, who turned the job into a true second career, which included more education.

"I got a master's degree in library science and found myself in the same situation, where the prospects weren't really great."

Here she was, a woman in her mid-20s with two master's degrees and a future that remained unclear. Then COVID-19 happened and her librarian job turned virtual, further compelling her to find her next, and hopefully more permanent, career.

"I read a story about a woman who, like me, was educated in a different field but really wanted to make an impact for women. She decided to start a new career as a mechanic, opened her own shop and she employs all female mechanics," Peterson said.

"I was so inspired. I knew that CLC had an automotive program. Then I got the college's mailer, and when I flipped it open, serendipitously right there was a picture of a young woman buffing a classic car and it said 'come join one of our apprenticeship programs.' I was sold."

Peterson enrolled in one of the first classes of CLC apprentices and began her studies in collision repair under the program's "learn and earn" model.

After eight weeks of learning in the college's auto shop, she was interviewed and then hired by an employer partner, Gerber Collision & Glass in Crystal Lake, to begin the earning portion of the program.

"The first day she was sanding down a bumper and getting it ready for painting and I was blown away," Gerber Collision manager Steve Kispetik said. "When she started here, she had only finished eight weeks at CLC, so I was pretty impressed by how much she's already learned."

While CLC's program is new for Kispetik's shop, the apprenticeship idea is not. His company began their own version, called the Technician Development Program, two years prior and has already seen the success it can bring.

What's more, he says the timing couldn't be better for apprentices like Peterson, as the growth potential in the industry is about to boom.

"We need to make sure we're training people now and getting people ready to come into this field, because we have people leaving and retiring. The need is there," Kispetik said.

"The average body man in a shop right now is 56 years old. It seems, compared to 20 years ago, there aren't a lot of people that even know about this career and its opportunities."

After two career attempts, which ultimately lacked that long-term potential, Peterson is excited about where she's ended up. That said, she's not going to let her previous education go to waste. In fact, she fully expects her artistic training to influence her collision repair career.

"They're actually not as unrelated as you would think. Body repair requires a really high degree of attention to detail, and classical music and librarianship both use that skill," Peterson said.

"There's also an artistry aspect as you're removing dents, shaping body fillers and bringing cars back to the way they were pre-collision. I am having so much fun. I am finally in a situation where I can say I just want to be at work."

Started in Aug. 2020, CLC's apprenticeship program is a structured "Learn and Earn" curriculum that combines job-related classroom learning along with structured on-the-job training guided by a mentor.

These programs offer employers the opportunity to strengthen and build their workforce by developing a tailored high-quality talent pipeline. The goal for apprenticeship programs is to provide workers with a set of skills that meet the specific needs of local employers using a flexible learning approach.

Currently, the college offers apprenticeships in six fields of interest: automotive, business, health care, horticulture, information technology and manufacturing.

For more information about the College of Lake County, visit www.clcillinois.edu or call (847) 543-2000.

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