August President's Update

By Drew Barnes, Vale School District

Greetings Fellow NACAT Members,

It is hard to believe that as many of us are reading this update, we are already back in the shop, preparing for yet another successful school year. Summer just flies by! Hopefully each of one of you enjoyed some kind of a break to help you reset and get motivated for this new school year.

With it already being August, that also means that we just completed another very successful NACAT Conference. We had a great time in Indianapolis for our 50th anniversary conference. We had a fantastic list of training courses to choose from, with a variety of topics offered to meet the needs of all automotive educators. Thank you to all the educators that were able to attend, and if you were not able to attend, we are looking forward to seeing you next year. Also, a special thank you to all those who make this event possible each year. That includes our sponsors, industry partners, course instructors, hotel staff, and our business management team. This year’s event truly was outstanding; However, as with every year we are always looking for ways to improve to best suit the needs of our membership. With that being said, if you have not had a chance to complete the attendee survey, please do so as soon as possible. You should have received a link immediately following the conference. If you have any questions in regards to completing the survey please feel free to reach out to our business manager, Heather Sebben (heather@nacat.org). We truly appreciate the feedback from our members and attendees. If you have any suggestions or concerns outside of what can be shared in the survey, please feel free to reach out to me, any of the other NACAT officers, or board members.

As an organization, we are continually trying to improve/increase our member benefits. Currently, we are working on growing our instructor resources on the membership benefit section of our website. We would like to add more documents and quick resources to further assist automotive educators. We would like to encourage our members to donate to this endeavor, if you have anything that you would like to share please feel free to share that information with us. These items can be downloadable documents, videos, quick links, or anything else that you think would be a valuable resource to fellow members. Within these resources we are planning to include a section for teacher lesson plans, and we are encouraging our members to share specific content lessons that they have created and feel other teachers would benefit from. For more information on this or how to donate materials, please contact Heather Sebben.

Although we just wrapped our 2024 NACAT Conference, that doesn’t mean we aren’t looking to the future and making plans for the 2025 conference. For those who haven’t heard the news, we have already set the dates and conference location for next year. The 2025 NACAT Conference will be held June 9-12, 2025 in Detroit, Michigan! We are very excited about this location, as Motor City has so much to offer in regards to the automotive industry. Be on the lookout for updates about this event, as we continue to make plans for what may be the most exciting NACAT Conference yet!

One of the core values of NACAT is family, and if you have ever been to a NACAT conference you know what I am talking about. We have already begun planning activities for families for next year’s conference. We encourage our members, if it is possible and fits into their summer schedule, to bring along their spouses and children to learn what the NACAT Family is all about.

I hope you all have a very successful school year. Remember to save the dates , June 9-12, 2025, and make plans to join us next summer in Detroit!