Seattle, WA — Marking June 8 ribbon cutting ceremonies at the all-new, $4.2 million state-of-the-art Professional Automotive Training Center (PATC) expansion at Shoreline (WA) Community College, keynote presenter Bill Bergen, Toyota’s national dealer education manager, lauded the new facility as a major investment in future automotive technological training for all Puget Sound dealer service operations.
“We’ve been partners here since 1988,” Bergen noted. “And to attest to the effectiveness of this training curriculum at Shoreline, over that time we’ve hired and placed 170 T-TEN (Toyota Technical Education Network) graduates in 26 Washington Toyota and Lexus dealers.”
Toyota (including the company’s Portland regional offices) and the Puget Sound Automotive Dealer Association each contributed $1 million toward construction of the 26,000 sq. ft. addition on the Shoreline campus, just north of Seattle.
The expansive center now embraces more than 60,000 sq. ft. of offices, classrooms, diagnostic centers and training bays.
An additional $2 million was provided by the State of Washington. The balance was provided by other industry contributors.
Toyota’s Portland Region also uses Shoreline PATC as a satellite facility. The center’s advanced training standards, including hybrid propulsion systems, are expected to meet the technological service needs of Pacific Northwest Toyota dealers for the next 20 years.
In addition to Toyota, manufacturer-specific training at Shoreline is provided by Honda, General Motors and Chrysler. Other industry training programs are conducted by Hyundai, Volvo, Subaru, Nissan, Hunter Engineering and Snap-on Industrial.
Bergen, who is also an associate dean at the University of Toyota, took time at the dedication to acknowledge installation of a plaque honoring the late Jack Shiel, first T-TEN and automotive instructor at the college. Shiel served at Shoreline from 1983 to 2006.
“He changed a lot of people’s lives here,” noted Bergen. “Jack was not content to simply train good technicians – he wanted to train the best.”
