Crimson and Gold Connection; Mike Elder and Jonathan Robertson

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. I am Dustin Triber. Today's guests are Mike Elder. He's assistant professor and automotive technology and Jonathan Robertson. He's a student and automotive technology major and he's getting ready to represent Pittsburgh State University at World Skills Competition this fall in Abu Dhabi. So guys welcome. We'll start with Mike and we can kind of have you talk a little bit first. Introduce kind yourself what you do here at the college. I may assist at professor and automotive technology here have been since 2011. One of my roles when I shortly after I got here was in working with the National Skills USA Contest and the Auto Service Technology Committee. I was chosen to also work with the World Skills Organization as the US expert which my responsible then is to help train and prepare the US competitor for World Skills Competition. Explain to us what World Skills Competition is. World Skills is an organization has been described to kind of as a world hub that promotes skilled trades. It's basically has as conformed of comprised of 77 members member countries. The actual

skills that are actually promoted are number about 45 now and so if you can think of a skilled profession there's probably a contest associated with it and the goal is of course to educate the public on the need for skilled trades and promote our young folks who are pursuing those. So World Skills is not just automotive but different type of technology? Absolutely. Gotcha and this particular competition will be all type of technologies at this competition? Oh yes. You have everything from bakers to machinists. You think of a skilled trade and they will be represented there. Even down to confectionists who are making sculptures out of sponge for your very very talented. You're talking the most talented students from every country in the world. Wow. And Jonathan you've been chosen to represent now the just Pittsburgh State University or United States. You represent United States. Oh wow. So I've been basically every two

years. Skills USA gets all their national medalists together and they have interviews and basically it's just like applying for a job times 10 and resumes all that and they pick one person out of that pool every two years to represent the U.S. and their respective area. Well let's start at step one. How did you begin working towards even heading into the direction? I've been I've competed in skills competition since I was a junior in high school so five years now. Started on the high school level and first contest I did. I kind of enjoyed it and I thought you know maybe I keep doing this and then I was able to go from our little local contest we held in the school to the district contest to the state contest finally last year to the national contest and I was able to finish second in the nation. Wow. So it's been a it's been a journey but it's been worth it so far. Congratulations. That's that's a major achievement. So the competitions what will you be doing do they give you a pile of metal until you build a car? It's a it's a little bit different at worlds than it is and skills USA at typically though what they'll do is they'll have I think it's

about five stations typically they're about three hours long and they'll they can be everything from they'll be a they'll be a station will they'll basically give us an engine. We'll have to tear it down measure it diagnose it put it back together in the three hour time limit. We'll have another one we'll have a car with a bunch of electrical issues from windows to radio issues to any kind of electronics thing you could think of bug and again same thing three hours figure it all out. Wow and you're timed we are timed they they're very particular about they want to see not just do they want to see you fix the car they want to see the steps you take you the your process you're thinking how you get to the point where you find out what's wrong with the car and how you fix it. Gotcha and how do you train for this we basically find anything we can that is extremely difficult we have vehicles in our fleet of school vehicles that have you know some very unique issues and we've we've put him on a couple he's been successful pretty well so far we've got one right now

that's really working they working him a little bit but it's it's gonna be great great training for him because you're part of part of the training is is learning to deal with you know the frustration it comes with this didn't fix it what do I do now and so far he's he's done pretty well he's you know you stop and you back up and you say well we're gonna have to start from here and go again that's great great stuff because having having been to this competition a couple times I've seen many you know competitors just fall apart I mean they hit it they hit a stumbling block and they just cave and so you give you it's it's part of the real world I mean the cars here it's in my bay I got to get it fixed and so it's very but the pressure course is here you know you're representing your country you want to do well yeah but that's that's one of his you know we watched him in competition before he's very cool under fire and I don't think he's gonna disappoint us there so Jonathan knows the stuff then hopefully hopefully as far as preparing for the contest we can't do this alone our whole faculty is involved in this I mean it's a group

effort and you know we welcome suggestions on what we can do to help you know prepare Jonathan as well as corporate support I mean we're looking for corporate training opportunities where he can go and sit next to technicians in factory training scenarios anything we do to that regard helps preparing because I can tell him right now his competitors are preparing every day absolutely they are very very dedicated to this in United States you know we don't kind of value the trades as many as some of our foreign countries do so there they take it very very seriously we do too it's just we're not noted publicly for it and so we hope the exposure will help change that because we need people you know like Jonathan who are talented to repair cars repair electronics all those things in your household you know anybody's had a you know an electrical problem in their house you got wait for the electrician to come and you want somebody certified and competent to do

that work it's important to you once you go to the competition I assume it's probably over a matter of days I assume four days I believe four days four days the competition preparation work is I accept to arrive a week before to help prepare the contest I mean one of our responsibilities is to actually set up the contest and establish the grading criteria we have to agree on how we're going to grade all our competitors and if you win is there a winner or is it just everybody graded oh no there is a there is a winner it's it's very very much like the Olympics there's a metal metal ceremony and stuff with gold silver bronze oh wow so and then you hear the national anthem and then congratulations and again a good luck on the world skills competition this fall 2017 in Abu Dhabi Jonathan Robertson wow it's just amazing that you can do this and represent the United States and Mike Elder thank you both for coming in talking to us on crimson

gold connection thank you destined thank you