About 30 teens stand clustered around Ralph Miller, a Sinclair Community College automotive technology professor. He tells them about the car behind him, a 1984 Dodge Diplomat that he’s worked on himself, and the chassis dynamometer it's sitting on.
“What we’re looking at right now is rear wheel horsepower,” Miller told them. “What we typically see is they measure the horsepower at the crankshaft. How many of you guys are into fast cars? Vets and Hellcats and stuff like that?”
A few of the crowd's hands rise beyond hushed conversations.
The group of 12 to 15 year olds are campers in Sinclair’s automotive summer camp. They spend three days learning car terminology and maintenance skills, using tools from Sinclair’s labs.
They leave the class with more automotive education than many of their roadway-licensed counterparts. They're now prepared to face flat tires, dead batteries and DIY oil changes before they can even drive.
On their first day they dismantled an engine to learn how it works and put it back together. Parker Burke, a 16 year old on summer break from Carole High School, said that was his favorite part.
“I really like the process of everything, how detailed it is, and how much of a process there is in taking apart an engine and putting it back together," he said. "Lots of steps and things you have to do that you wouldn't think you have to.”
Burke’s not a car fanatic — he’s more of a soccer player, with practice every day of this break. He recalled only working on a car with his dad a few times.
His mom thought the camp would be a good experience — and so did his friends' moms.
“It's fun, I’m basically here in a group of friends," he said. "We all joke around together so it's a good time.”
The camp gives teens a place to both learn life skills and exercise their enthusiasm for cars, said Justin Morgan, chair of Sinclair’s automotive technology department.
“Every time we run the summer camp, there's young people that are just crazy enthusiastic about automotive,” Morgan said. “There's obviously some kids where this wasn't their passion. Their passion may be football or soccer or whatever the case, maybe mom or dad signed them up. But, at the end of day there, they had a great time with it and they enjoyed it.”
He inherited his enthusiasm from his automotive industry-oriented family.
“One of the reasons we do this is young people don't get the same experience that maybe I did growing up — it gives an outlet for them to learn about cars,” Morgan said.
The annual camp started a few years ago, and its early graduates are now finishing high school. This coming fall Morgan’s expecting some of the first of the summer camp graduates to come to Sinclair to continue their automotive education.
Sinclair offers certificates and Associate's degrees in automotive technology.
“We run a lot of outreach events here in our department and Sinclair as a whole,” Morgan said. “We're a community college. This is a time when we can give back to the community. This is probably my personal favorite event — it's probably the most rewarding event that we run all year.”
