From Technician to Teacher: Bringing National Recognition to SLCC

Why would a happily-employed technician in the prime of his career abruptly leave his job to teach? It wouldn’t be wrong to say Kirk Miller was answering a call to teach at his alma mater, Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). It wasn’t so much a powerful calling as an inclination that Miller says was “always in the back of my mind, with my dad teaching at SLCC.” It might have stayed dormant, a vocational leaning never fully realized.

And then came a phone call from Neal Grover, Miller’s collision repair teacher. The charismatic educator was leaving very big shoes to fill with his looming retirement at SLCC. To Miller’s surprise, Grover was inviting him to apply for the job.

Miller had always kept in touch with his former teacher, not fully appreciating Grover’s interest in following his career. “There was a lot of buzz over Neal’s job. There were nine candidates,” recalls Miller. “I had all kinds of I-CAR certificates but didn’t have a teaching degree yet. The school would be taking a chance on me, but Neal thought I was a good fit for the job.”

If the thought of teaching has ever crossed your mind, chances are it’s still quietly lurking there. Teaching was more of a daydream for Kirk Miller until he got an unexpected phone call. Would he leave a rewarding technician job to teach at his alma mater?

In fall 2017, Miller made a dramatic career change that he hadn’t seen coming just a few months earlier. He was back at the campus where he trained 20 years earlier. Now, with very little preparation, he was responsible for preparing students to work in collision repair. “One day I was working as a technician. The next I was teaching students,” he says. It was bound to be somewhat stressful making an “out-of-the-blue” transition from technician to teacher.

That first year was “a little rough,” Miller admits. “There were times I shot from the hip. It was a big learning curve for me.” Training college students who “never touched a grinder or even a wrench” was more challenging and required even more patience than mentoring apprentices or leading a work team, which Miller had done as a technician. Yet, from the start, there was validation. Miller’s students stood out in SkillsUSA events. To date, three of his students advanced all the way to national, placing second, third, and fourth.

Although Miller came to his new job without formal teaching credentials, he did have experience as a student. That was a foundation he could build on. “I remembered the things I liked about my classes and the things I wished we would have done more of.”

Most importantly, like the young people he was teaching, Miller had been an average student. He understood the frustrations of a beginner, like “you’re going to break a lot of stuff.” The hardest thing, Miller says, “is getting your hand to talk to your brain. That happens when you can feel that something’s too high and needs more sanding or you know something’s wrong about a panel because it just doesn’t feel right.”

Miller also remembered how it felt to have a teacher who took a personal interest in him. “Neal made all his students feel like family.” Miller’s teaching style was spot on from day one. “I didn’t come up with it on my own. I learned it from Neal.”

Miller learns his students’ names the first day of class. “I’m someone they can talk and joke with. They know I realize I have a job because of them.” The connection doesn’t end at graduation. “I get texts: ‘Hey, I got a job.’ ‘I got married.’ ‘I bought a house.’ ‘I got a kid.’ It’s so awesome to see students who started with no knowledge now working in the industry and building their lives.”

The school’s I-CAR curriculum was one area where Miller felt completely in his comfort zone. He had taken I-CAR courses as an SLCC student himself, and as a technician, amassed an extensive I-CAR training record. (SLCC currently uses the I-CAR Academy program, which Miller says is “in every school’s best interest to use.” He particularly likes new learning material on ADAS and electrical topics.)

Current, top-notch technical skills are a critical qualification to teach collision repair. Miller came to SLCC fresh off the shop floor where he headed a team entrusted with the most heavily-damaged vehicles. Today, I-CAR helps him stay up-to-date. Miller participates in pilot testing of new I-CAR courses and is an I-CAR welding instructor. This part-time I-CAR job brings Miller into about one shop a week. This helps him build strong bridges with his students’ future employers.

Coming directly from the industry also meant Miller had relationships with equipment makers and suppliers that he could leverage to upgrade the school’s shop. To date, he’s raised in-kind donations valued at over $200,000 including a frame measuring system, a paint system, sanders, aluminum dent removal tools, and welders.

SLCC’s modern collision repair shop is a popular tour stop for visiting high school classes. “Even schools without shop programs that we traditionally didn’t hear from are bringing their kids here,” Miller says.

It’s part of the reason collision repair enrollment in Miller’s class has doubled in eight years, from 10 to the class maximum of 20, with five more on a waiting list. (Growth has also occurred in the refinishing segment of SLCC’s program taught by John “Hondo” Espil.) Drop-outs are rare, and Miller can often steer those struggling with the physical demands of body work into options like ADAS calibrations or estimating.

A bigger reason behind enrollment growth is the success of Miller’s students. Besides the SkillsUSA banners displayed in the school, the graduation and job placement stats speak volumes about the quality of education. The trend has been that the majority of collision repair students graduate with associate’s degrees, with the balance completing certificates. From the 20 graduates in the class of 2025, 15 now work in shops, while the other five gained the knowledge they sought to apply to personal pursuits.

All of this is affirming, but Miller is just as thrilled by “the little wins every day. A student is struggling, and then a light bulb goes off and he ‘kills it.’ I have room to improve too. I’m not Mr. Know It All. The best advice I could give new students or new technicians coming to the industry is to always be open minded to learn new things. Don't think you know everything and always have a good attitude. It will get you further than anything.”

Miller has found a way to adjust student attitudes about entry-level job wages. “I explain it’s not what you start at, but what your potential is.” Using a common benchmark students refer to, Miller tells students, “In three years, you’ll be making double what you’d be making at Amazon. I show them some of my old paysheets. When they see how many hours I clocked and what I earned, their eyes pop out.”

Miller has given a lot of thought to the topic of wages, and he thinks a change is needed in the industry. It’s not starting wages he singles out in his call to action, but rather the common practice of grouping work hours so that wages for a job are split between experienced techs and the apprentices they’re training.

Miller hopes to witness many more light-bulb-going-off moments in his classroom, where he trains the much-needed, next generation of collision repair technicians. He looks forward to a gold medal at the national level SkillsUSA. “We’ve come close; we’ll get there!” If there’s one holdover from his technician days, it’s “the dream that every technician has to open their own shop. But, as my full-time job, I would like to be teaching at this job until I retire.” He’s grateful he picked up the phone and responded to the call that triggered his abrupt but very rewarding career change.

Would the most satisfying place to spend the rest of your career be in a classroom, passing your knowledge on to the next generation of collision repairers? Kirk Miller underestimated his qualifications but answered a recruiting call from his former teacher. We hope sharing his “out-of-the-blue” transition from top technician to an outstanding educator with three (so far) national SkillsUSA honors for Salt Lake Community College, we hope this story will encourage others to act on what might otherwise feel like just a vocational leaning towards teaching.

World Teachers’ Day on October 5 inspires I-CAR to express gratitude to the dedicated technical school educators training future body technicians, refinishers, estimators, welders, and other collision repair specialists to make complete, safe, and quality repairs. We also salute the essential training and certification testing done by our exceptional corps of I-CAR instructors.