How Our Technicians Who Maintain and Repair Your GM Vehicles are Trained

You have a medical issue and go to your doctor, whom you know, who then refers you to a specialist you don’t know. Aside from hoping your insurance will cover it, what you want most is for this doctor to be competent—that they will correctly diagnose your problem and give you the best advice to resolve it. You hope they are capable, but since you’re not really in a position to judge that yourself, you check their credentials and training.    

Getting your car repaired isn’t much different. You have to hope that the mechanic diagnoses the problem correctly and takes the right steps for the repair. Fortunately, when you take your car to Twin Falls Chevrolet, you can trust that they have service technicians who have been trained in GM’s Automotive Service Education Program (ASEP). This blog post explains what that is. 

The brief overview is that ASEP is a two-year associate’s degree program that combines classroom learning with hands-on experience through paid internships at dealerships. Currently, about 1,500 students are enrolled in the program, which is available at 53 GM- and dealer-supported schools nationwide. 

Students arrive at the ASEP with a wide variety of backgrounds.  Some have been working on cars as a hobby, and some have years of experience as professional mechanics.  “You’re sitting in a classroom and seeing 10 different people that all think differently about something when they come in,” says David Piper, who now helps design the curriculum, “but when they walk out of that classroom, they’re all on the same page. That’s kind of cool.” 

The program is a mix of classroom training and supervised on-the-job training at actual dealerships. It involves instruction in a wide range of disciplines. “You’re learning thermodynamics, you’re learning heating and air conditioning, you’re learning plumbing, you’re learning fuel systems, you’re learning so much,” Piper says. “There are skills you learn as a technician that you can apply to just about anything.” 

So far, over 20,000 technicians have enrolled in the program. Those who stay within the GM service system will start on the shop floor as apprentices. From there, they work their way up to become a Technician and potentially a Service Manager. Afterward, some may advance to become Field Service Managers or Service Consultants.  

Because vehicles are constantly advancing, the curriculum keeps changing. This gives thos those in the medical field something of an advantage.  The human body hasn’t changed much and functions roughly the same as it did 100 or even 1000 years ago. Cars and trucks, however, are quite different from just 20 years ago, especially with the rise of hybrids and EVs. 

“I feel responsible for all 30,000 GM technicians in the country.” Says Piper. “They’re taking the training that I had a hand in developing, and watching them grow to world-class status, that’s the greatest part of this job.” 

Hopefully, your Chevrolet won’t need any unexpected repairs anytime soon. But if the need arises, you can trust that the technicians at the Twin Falls Chevrolet service department will know exactly what to do.