Blue Mountain Community College

Student Stories for Pathways Initiative & Report to Oregon Board of Education

BMCC Diesel Technology Program

January 14, 2009

Success Story:  Sgt. Josh Muller of the 126^th Engineer Battalion, Idaho National Guard, is a second year student in the Diesel Tech program.  During his eight years of active duty in a special operations unit at Ft. Bragg, Josh had no mechanical training.  Two years after his discharge, he joined the Oregon National Guard and served as a transportation specialist (truck driver) for a year before moving to Idaho where he took a mechanics slot at approximately the same time he started the DOL/ETA supported diesel technician training at BMCC.  Because of his training, Josh is now in charge of a contact team, responsible for maintaining heavy equipment and trucks in this company element of the Idaho National Guard.  In addition to the maintenance, Josh supervises and trains two soldiers.  His diesel tech training at BMCC has thus not only helped Josh gain rank and responsibility, but has the capacity building element of training soldiers in his unit.  When Josh returns from drill, he runs the maintenance situations past Rob Johnson and Scott Waggoner, the diesel tech instructors; they assess how he handled matters and give advice when needed.  In addition, Josh is an ambassador for the program, discussing it with interested employers and students in Idaho, extending the regional reach.

With years in the timber industry and a good job as a saw filer, 52 year old Tod could see the hand writing on the wall that his job was soon to be eliminated.  He started researching professions that would match his skill and interests, and found both computer and diesel technicians fit the bill, but diesel jobs paid better.  Tod taken animal nutrition classes at Blue Mountain Community College in the 70’s when he was a meat cutting apprentice, so he was interested when he saw an ad that BMCC was restarting a diesel technology program and applied.  Now in his second year of the program, he has a cooperative work experience job with the local Caterpillar dealer and hopes to find work in one of their many locations in the northwest upon graduation.

Shelly got her GED at Blue Mountain Community College then landed a clerical job in the local district attorney’s office as part of a JTPA program.  The job ‘took’ and she spent the next 14 years improving her work skills on the job. When Shelly’s mother retired from her administrative job at Hanford she started working as a long-haul truck driver, so when Shelly drove by a sign advertising the reopening of the BMCC diesel technology program, something stirred inside her and the craving to learn something new led her to apply for the program.  Although Shelly’s mother would like for her to go on the road with her, Shelly sees herself working for a short time as a diesel technician then coupling those skills with her clerical/office administration background to work as a shop foreman or coordinator of some sort.

Tanna’s mother always fixed the family car and her dad drove logging truck for years before taking a truck driving job with an agriculture company, so entering the diesel technology program seemed like a natural fit, though as a recent high school graduate she had plenty of people tell her she couldn’t do it.   As a second year student with plenty of job experience in dead-end part-time jobs, Tanna will get her CDL certification this summer to add to her diesel technician skills and is hoping to stay on with the logging business where she is currently getting her cooperative work experience credits.