The planned Jim Hudson Automotive Institute for Augusta Technical College is celebrating two awards, one monetary and one for an instructor.
Christopher Davis, an Automotive Technology instructor and department chair, was selected as the statewide winner of the Rick Perkins Award for Excellence in Technical Instruction. It is the highest honor a technical college instructor can receive in Georgia.
The recognition comes with a $2,500 prize, and Davis will be a representative for technical education for the next year, including appearances before the General Assembly.
Davis told ABD he is looking forward to sharing how his education at a technical college led him to his current success.
“I had the opportunity to go to Mercer University. I went down there, and I checked out the university,” he said. “I quickly realized that that wasn’t for me. I wanted more of a hands-on approach, and that’s when I checked out Augusta Technical College. After I graduated from there, I got out into the world, and I was an automotive technician for many years.”
However, from the day of his graduation, Davis said his goal was to return one day as an instructor.
“I actually told Mr. Elam (former Augusta Tech president Terry Elam) that on the stage when I walked across to get my diploma. I said, ‘Hey, you know, I’m coming back to teach.’”
Davis is a leader in the department at a time when the college is building its latest satellite campus at the former Johnson Motor Company on Walton Way. The project was announced in late 2023 with the Jim Hudson Automotive Group, Augusta National Golf Club, and the Knox Foundation each contributing $1 million.
Recently, the project was awarded a more than $6.8 million grant from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In a news release, Dr. Kendricks Hooker, president of Augusta Tech, called the grant a powerful investment in Augusta’s economic future.
“The Jim Hudson Automotive Institute will directly address critical workforce shortages while creating pathways to high-wage, in-demand careers for our students,” he said. “By transforming a legacy automotive site into a modern training facility, we are aligning education, industry, and economic development in a way that delivers real value to employers and opportunity to our community.”
The original plan was for the campus to be operational by late 2025, but fundraising for the $40 million project slowed. Davis said that is when they turned to grant writing to get phase one complete.
“We can get automotive in the building, we can take an existing program, and we can expand it,” he explained. “And that’s exactly what that $6.8 million is going to allow us to do. We can move in, we can expand, hire additional instructors, we can put more people to work, because we’ll have a larger space, and we’ll have more instructors.”
The state-of-the-art training facility will prepare students for high-tech careers in automotive maintenance technology. It will cross over all forms of transportation, including internal combustion, electric, hybrid, and diesel engines.
The building is 65,000 square feet, and phase one will occupy roughly half of that space. In addition to training new technicians, it can also provide continuing education to support service departments at dealerships and private automotive repair businesses.
Davis can see the 6.4-acre site as being more than a school. It can help revitalize an underserved area and provide support to the surrounding community.
“We want to be able to offer some additional services there too,” he said. “If we can help with job placement and different things. We haven’t completely ironed everything out for phase two yet, but we want to do the rest of the building. But whatever we do, we want to be able to benefit the community.”
This will be Augusta Tech’s third satellite campus. The college has a partnership with Piedmont Augusta to use the Summerville Hospital for its medical training programs. The Golf Course Management Program, including golf course management, golf course technician, and horticulture, is based at the Augusta Municipal Golf Course.
