From lube tech to legacy builder: Why Caid Kroeger left the shop to shape tomorrow's young technicians 

Caid Kroeger is the degree coordinator and assistant professor of automotive courses at Weber State University.

The 33-year-old started his career in automotive as a 20-year-old lube tech at a Chevy dealership. At the dealership, he met mentor and eventual Weber State automotive instructor Scott Holland, who took him on as an apprentice within the dealership and invested four years in training and mentoring him.

After leaving the dealership to pursue an associate degree at Weber State, Kroeger was assigned Holland as his instructor on "the first day of school." Kroeger graduated in 2019 and left Utah to work for Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan. After COVID hit, he returned to Utah and dealership work, “teaching, service writing, and then working into assistant service managing,” he said.

He transitioned from the dealership to the college in Weber State’s automotive department three years ago when he was contacted and told he’d be perfect for an instructor position. He applied, and three years later, he remains passionate about educating the next generation of automotive technicians.

Today, he shares why he chose to become an educator.

Q: Did you see automotive education as your career path? 

Cade Kroeger: Not at all. I will tell you that right now. I wake up every day, and I'm like, this is surreal. I would never have thought that I would have ever been in academia. I honestly thought I was going to be a technician the rest of my life; I was content working on cars. But I was dead set on doing a two-year associate degree and then being a technician for the rest of my life.

When I was at Weber State, manufacturers started coming in. Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, GM would come in every now and then, and Sherwin-Williams would come in because they do automotive paint stuff. I started to see that there was more to the automotive industry than just being a technician.

Q: Walk me through a day in your life 

Kroeger: At Weber State, I manage everything on the associate and bachelor's degree side of our automotive service program. I handle curriculum-related tasks, syllabi, and have input on what instructors teach and scheduling. The department chair still has to sign off, but I'm responsible for making sure our automotive service technology degree pathway is successful, and students get through the program.

I came back to Weber because I want to give students the same opportunities I had. I'm not going to be a millionaire doing this, but I got into mentoring in the industry. When Weber offered me this position, I saw an opportunity to help students have those experiences and follow whatever they want to do in their lives. I was a lube tech, worked my way through A-line tech, service writing, and all that. I want them to be successful.

Q: In terms of developing and building the curriculum for your students, how are you doing that, and then how is ASE involved? 

Kroeger: ASE is involved because they have their task list, which gives us our framework for what we teach. We're a master accredited school, so it gives us our framework. But ASE has been very helpful in getting us the contacts to succeed. Yes, we are a big automotive school. Everyone in the automotive industry seems to know where Weber State is, but you'd be surprised at how many people outside the automotive industry don't know that Weber State  has an automotive program. 

Our partnership with ASE really started to grow over the last three years. It's due to the entire faculty supporting ASE. What ASE has helped us do is get contacts with Phi-Tech, Milwaukee, and all these other companies to help our program grow. At the end of the day, yes, I'm at a big university, but I still have the same issues that every other two-year college does. I need funding, I need tools, I need cars, I need all this other stuff. Yes, we have this grand program, but we have to be very creative with how we get our stuff through grant writing, resources, and trying to get donations.

Q: What does success look like for you in this role? 

Kroeger: Success to me is my students being able to get out into the job force and have a successful career. I want to see them achieve their dreams. I want them to see what I did.

Here in academia, we rate students based on A, B, C, D just to get them through. That's just the way the scaling has to work. But I don't like to justify that as success. The reason is because we are in automotive. Not everyone is a math major, English major, or chemist. Yes, you do have to know all those principles in automotive. They've always been a hands-on type of learner for the most part.

My version of success is that they're my legacy. Those students who come out of our program are taught by John Kelly. People in the automotive industry know who John Kelly is. Scott Holland, Stevenson, me, Scott Hadzik. That one student who has gone through all of our courses has all of our knowledge in him. Each one of those students is Weber State's legacy. They're the ones that carry our name into the industry, that make it so when Ford is like: "Who do we need to get or who do we need to reach out to? Weber State University, because we love their students.” That's success to me.

We have a 99% job placement rate, and that has me tickled pink. I want my students to be successful in life. I want them to achieve their goals and dreams, and I do take pride in all of them because that's my knowledge walking down the street. That's John Kelly's knowledge walking down the street. That's a byproduct of five people teaching them all we know about cars. So, they should be collectively smarter than all of us at that point. That's the goal. I want the students to know more than I do eventually in life.