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Old 03-24-2011, 07:02 AM
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Default General Motors Institute now Kettering University

Kettering University, Flint, Michigan was formerly called General Motors Institute.

In reading about the University; it should be on the list of colleges considered by someone interested in pursuing a career in the automotive industry. below is some information about its founder, Charles Kettering. I enjoyed his thoughts on the process of "learning and education". A few excerpts are presented here; the complete article is at this link:
http://www.kettering.edu/visitors/ab..._kettering.jsp

Here is the link to Kettering University: http://www.kettering.edu/

Charles F. Kettering : Doing the right thing at the right time
By Richard P. Scharchburg, Thompson Professor of Industrial History

The Man...

Charles Franklin Kettering was born on a farm near Loundonville, Ohio, August 29, 1876. After graduation from high school, he accepted a teaching position in a one-room rural school. Although highly successful as a teacher, his mind was set on going to college.


n 1909, Kettering and Edward A. Deeds, his associate at NCR, formed their own industrial research laboratory, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (later known as DELCO). Within three years, they had produced a new all-electric starting, ignition and lighting system for automobiles. The system first appeared as standard equipment on the 1912 Cadillac and as its use spread, women could conveniently become drivers without the assistance of a chauffeur.

DELCO was eventually sold to General Motors and became the foundation for the General Motors Research Corporation of which Kettering became vice president in 1920. The list of innovations and inventions that are credited to Charles F. (nicknamed "Boss") Kettering is impressive.

His Interest in Education...

When approached to support an early concept of "practical education" he observed "...that people learned not only with their minds, but with their eyes and ears and hands." He was expressing his unfaltering confidence in the superiority of an educational concept derived from his own teaching experience as well as involvement with several cooperative education institutions.
Kettering's relationship to GMI can best be described as that of a godfather. It began with his first talk in Flint in 1916, ten years before General Motors decided to take over the school. Walter Chrysler, chairman of the Industrial Committee of the YMCA, invited Kettering to Flint to talk about his views on practical education. On that occasion Kettering noted: "Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely the best teacher, but the only possible teacher.. There is no war between theory and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the theory should supplement the practice and not precede it... Briefly, the cooperative job is the student's laboratory in which he learns the details of his profession."

Inspired by Kettering's presentation, the Industrial Committee of the YMCA arranged for factory workers to receive instruction adapted for their work in the factories. Under the committee's supervision, the resulting School of Automobile Trades offered a variety of classes over the next three years. Out of these early efforts to combine learning with practical needs came the formation of the Flint Institute of Technology in 1923 and the entrance of General Motors Institute in 1926. Speaking at the General Motors Institute's commencement in August, 1932, Kettering said. "I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done."

In 1941 on a similar occasion, he observed, "If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four-year course, we could end up with all theory and no music. When we study music, we start to practice from the beginning, and we practice for the entire time, because there is no other way to become a musician. Neither can we become engineers just by studying a text book, because practical experience is needed to correlate the so-called theory with practice." Thus Kettering reiterated his belief in the value of a practical education, a blending of theoretical knowledge with experience and common sense, to do the right thing at the right time.
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Old 03-24-2011, 11:44 AM
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Default practical education

Hi Richard

Thanks for sharing the information about Kettering & education. I agree with his thoughts, as a former educator of Auto mechanics, the books are needed to cover the basics & for specific data. The real learning is in the shop

Steve
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Old 03-24-2011, 11:55 AM
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Richard-
Kettering is spot on with his philosophy. Having spent many hours watching videos on learning how to spin metal. I understand the process as a concept. Its not until I try to do it in reality that my body understands it as a motion. Bringing the 2 together at the appropriate time is the challenge. There are videos I watched 2 years ago that had so much information in them that I continue to watch them today. I pick up new pointers about different aspects of spinning I didn't understand and could not see in the beginning.

Thanks for posting!
Nice thought for the day!
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Old 03-24-2011, 11:59 AM
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GMI was a great place to get an engineering education with an automotive emphasis. You had to have a sponsor and good grades to be accepted. You went to school to learn the theory and then co oped to get the hands on experience. Very good approach to learning the automotive business.
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Old 03-24-2011, 07:30 PM
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Joe,

Kettering still does the work study program. I have no connection, just happened across their web site when looking for some old info. My main reason for posting was to make people aware of the resource. Looked to be a neat place to get an education.
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Old 03-24-2011, 08:27 PM
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My dad worked in the shop for GM and wanted me to go to GMI really,really bad.
I went on a high school trip to visit GMI and see the going's on at the school. Well me at 16yrs old, these guys had to study way to much for me so I didn't go. Yup dad sure wasn't happy, sons not gonna be a GM engineer.
Now after 35yrs I'm still at GM as a tinsmith and have to deal with engineers that have a hard time finding there way out of a paper bag.
I don't know if any of them came from GMI, hopefully dought it.
Doug
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Old 03-25-2011, 05:38 AM
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Dougg,

What sort of work do you do at GM that you call yourself a tinsmith?
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Old 03-25-2011, 09:08 PM
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Using sheet metal up to 10ga.
Building duct work mostly round all welded joints, square to rounds, elbows. Square duct mostly pittsburg with ductmate flange.
Lots and lots of guards for machines.
Biulding,bending, rolling, shearing, and welding to what an engineer wants when you go out on the job and then wave there hands around going, "kinda make it like this so it can do this" and then I say,, OK.
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