NATEF Wins Mort Schwartz Award

Leesburg, Va. July 15, 2007 – The National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) was honored as the 2007 recipient of the Mort Schwartz Award on May 9th at the Global Aftermarket Symposium in Chicago. This award is given annually by AAIA’s Education Committee to the person, aftermarket company or educational institution that best advances the concepts and programs for Education or Continuing Education in the North American Automotive aftermarket. The award honors Schwartz, one of the automotive aftermarkets’ greatest success stories and a strong advocate for industry education programs.

Bill Kersten, NATEF President accepted the award on behalf of the NATEF Board of Trustees, the NATEF staff, and the thousands of dedicated automotive trainers and school administrators within more than 2300 certified training programs across the U.S. “This prestigious award further validates the positive impact NATEF has had on the improvement of America's secondary and postsecondary automobile, collision repair, and medium/heavy truck training programs since it began program evaluation and certification 25 years ago,” he said. “We are grateful to the AAIA Education Committee for this honor and the commitment to our future automotive professionals.”

Schwartz was a founder and principal fund raiser for the California Automotive Wholesalers Association’s scholarship initiatives and created the highly successful Global Automotive Aftermarket Symposium. It was at Schwartz’s insistence that the net proceeds from each years’ Global event be awarded, in the form of scholarships, to young deserving students who desire to further their education in the automotive industry.

In recognition of his uncompromising 35 year commitment and his passion for education, AAIA established the Mort Schwartz Excellence in Education Award in 2005. Each year nominations for this award are accepted and evaluated by the Education committee in accordance with the candidate’s innovation of new aftermarket education programs, advancement of existing programs and/or superlative effort to further promote the educational programs or education fund raising efforts established by Schwartz.

NATEF was founded in 1983 as an independent, non-profit organization with a single mission: To evaluate technician training programs against standards developed by the automotive industry and recommend qualifying programs for certification (accreditation) by ASE, the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence. The NATEF process has resulted in certified automotive training programs in all fifty states at the secondary and post-secondary levels. For more information about NATEF, visit www.natef.org.

For More Information:

Tony Molla (703) 669-6614
E-mail: Tony Molla