Waubonsee Community College opens Technical Education Center
Starting this fall, Waubonsee Community College welcomed students to its new Technical Education Center, a $60 million building at its Sugar Grove campus.
Waubonsee has long offered training for careers in automotive and welding technologies, but the new facility is meant to give students pursuing degrees and certificates more space for the hands-on training that makes up much of their programs, according to Waubonsee Community College President Brian Knetl.
The new facility, located just off of Route 47, is the first new building to be constructed at Waubonsee in 10 years, Waubonsee Community College Board President Rebecca Oliver said at an opening celebration for the center on Friday.
“It is very literally raising the visibility of the college,” Oliver said. “This building is raising the bar for career and technical education.”
The opening drew a crowd from the college and the community, along with a number of local elected officials — like U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville; state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora; state Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora; and Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog.
The new center is home to the college’s Automotive Service Technology, Automotive Collision and Refinishing Technology and Welding Technology programs, which include both associate’s degree programs and certificate programs. It has classrooms and labs with things like welding booths and paint booths, as well as office space and common space.
The programs being housed in the building aren’t new, Knetl explained on Friday at the opening celebration for the center.
“They’re so popular that we needed to find ways to expand our programs,” Knetl said.
So, a few years back, officials with the college began discussing the idea that ultimately became the Technical Education Center, he explained.
“Our programs have been strong for a really long time, and we’ve had really great faculty, but … our spaces just were not adequate enough … and big enough to allow for more students to be in there,” Knetl said.
Knetl explained that, before, the spaces for working on cars were smaller, and spread out across the campus.
Half of the $60 million project is being funded by the college’s reserve funds, while the other half is being funded by issuing bonds, according to the college. The board previously decided to allocate a portion of its annual state funding for the building, meaning there is no additional property tax levy for repaying the bonds.
Knetl said the program is intended to respond to both increased student interest in careers in trades and to demand for professionals qualified to do automotive and welding jobs.
“The trades are a very needed, viable and good careers to go into,” Knetl said. “I think more and more students are finding that, within a year (or) two years, they can earn a degree, they can earn a certificate and go out into the world and earn a great living doing something that they love.”
Public two-year colleges focusing on vocational and trade programs saw enrollment increases of almost 20% from the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2025, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. This is happening as overall college enrollment for 18- to 24-year-olds was down in 2022 compared to a decade earlier, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The programs at Waubonsee also offer students some flexibility, Knetl pointed out, by allowing them to earn certificates and join the workforce before completing an associate’s degree. Students can also “build and scaffold” the certificate programs into a full associate’s degree, “so they can kind of work at it little by little” while simultaneously working in the industry.
There were 751 students enrolled at Waubonsee in the automotive service, collision and refinishing and welding programs as of this fall, according to a spokesperson for the college. That’s a roughly 100-student increase from last year, largely due to an expansion of the college’s welding enrollment. The programs ranged from roughly 94% to 100% capacity this year.
Current student Irene Isitt, 18, said she always liked cars. But she didn’t necessarily plan to pursue a career fixing them until she went on a field trip to the Indian Valley Vocational Center and got to see its shop.
“I just like fixing things,” Isitt said. “I hate being in a classroom, so this is amazing.”
Now, a few weeks into her first year at Waubonsee, where she’s working toward an associate’s degree and is currently part of a collision and refinishing cohort, she’s refinishing two fenders and the hood of a car. So far, her cohort has made dents in the car parts and filled them. Soon, they’ll learn how to prime and paint them.
The collision and refinishing program has multiple sections, but the college has plans to add more in the future, per the college spokesperson.
For the programs, the college also has a fleet of cars for students to work on, but they also have opportunities for those in the community to bring in their personal vehicles to have them fixed up by students — for just the price of the materials, according to Ramiro Cervantes, Isitt’s teacher and an instructor of auto collision and refinishing technology.
Students in the cohort program will get to work on the actual cars next semester, Cervantes said.
The center also includes new technology, explained Knetl. He said the college had the chance to “really dream about what students will not only need now, but need in the future,” pointing to, for example, new technologies for hybrid and electric vehicles.
The center also has a PPG MoonWalk system, a tool that scans cars to identify and mix paint colors to match them more closely, Cervantes explained. Without it, the matching and mixing would have to be done by hand, and would be more subject to human error.
Isitt is hoping to paint cars one day, she said. And she’s looking to start working in a shop within the next year.
But Cervantes, who said he himself graduated from the program at Waubonsee and then spent years working in shops, had long wanted to teach at the college.
“To kind of give back,” he said.
But, while the space is different and the technology is ever-changing, much about the programs remain the same, Cervantes said.
“It’s still Waubonsee,” he said on Friday. “People make Waubonsee.”
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