LIMA, Ohio — On North Eastown Road in this small industrial Midwest town, a nondescript building wears the address 1530.
From the outside, it doesn’t attract attention from a passerby. The beige building’s signage reads “UNOH Motorsports Racing Complex.” But once you step inside, it’s as if you’ve teleported to North Carolina, and you’re standing in the garage of Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, or Stewart-Haas Racing.
Race cars line the walls, a cavalry of students do all the maintenance, and four years after arriving, they will leave to work in some facet of the motorsports or automotive industry and make a generous salary, sometimes in six figures immediately upon graduation.
Welcome to the University of Northwestern Ohio, a private, not-for-profit institution that’s home to a one-of-a-kind motorsports program that employs world-class instructors and produces highly-skilled graduates, some of which are at Michigan International Speedway this weekend.
“Other institutions have tried to copy it,” UNOH president Jeff Jarvis said. “But we are by far the No. 1 automotive, diesel, high performance motorsports university in the world. We’ve continued to grow and build new facilities. You can go anywhere in motorsports between NASCAR, NHRA, Monster Jam, USAC, World of Outlaws — anything in motorsports — we’re involved in, we train in, and we have graduates working in.”
The High Performance Motorsports program is part of UNOH’s College of Applied Technologies, which includes automotive, diesel, robotics, alternate fuels, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, agriculture, and high performance. Students participate in eight six-week sessions that are 70 percent hands on and a visual learner’s paradise.
The highly specialized field is part of a multi-billion dollar industry that offers careers in a wide array of sectors from sales to engine building, after-market accessories to chassis building. Many graduates work directly with racing teams or sanctioning bodies.
The College of Applied Technologies has an 83 percent job placement rating. That number rises one percentage point for High Performance Motorsports.
“You hear about these jobs in motorsports and people think, ‘Well, I'll never get there,’” said Trey Becker, a 2017 UNOH graduate who’s now the school’s national admissions representative. “Well, I'm just from a small town in southwest Missouri, and I never thought a dream of working in the motorsports industry was achievable. To realize you can come here to the best university in the world for it, gain that education, and get opportunities to help you on that path is incredible.”
How it started
The program began like many great ideas: on the back of a napkin.
In 1991, Jarvis dined with Chuck Blum, the president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association, the largest automotive aftermarket group in the world, and Harry Hibler, the publisher of Hot Rod Magazine. Hibler noted there was no motorsports program at any university in the country.
Out came a napkin, and in 1992, between 60 and 80 students were enrolled in UNOH’s program. The university’s current enrollment is 4,500, with students from 42 states and 38 countries. More than 1,200 are in High Performance Motorsports.
Jarvis has been at UNOH for 44 years, starting in the automotive program in 1975 and working as a tour guide and a janitor. He’s been the university’s president since 1999, and good luck finding a college president who’s more immersed in the academics.
On a recent May morning, he sat in a second-story conference room outside his office wearing a UNOH pullover over a golf shirt with his sleeves rolled up, espousing the virtues of UNOH.
“It’s been such a neat experience for everybody here,” Jarvis said. “It’s exceeded everyone’s expectations. We’re pleasantly blessed because our brand is worldwide.”
The 600 Building sounds like a spartan existence. In actuality, the Dr. Jeffrey A. Jarvis High Performance Motorsports Complex is a seven-acre compound that features state-of-the-art equipment and cutting-edge technology.
Brenden Rassel, a junior from Woonsocket, S.D., saw an advertisement on TV about UNOH. When he looked up the university online, it became his preferred destination. But Rassel’s parents weren’t keen on him going 895 miles from home. Their opinion changed once they visited campus.
“If I could change one thing or tell my younger self to do something different, I wouldn't tell him anything. Do exactly what you did,” Rassel said. “It’s been an amazing opportunity. To be a part of the race team, get to know all my instructors, and be as involved as I have been is really rewarding. It's been a huge career-building opportunity.”
Teaming up
Perhaps the most unique option at UNOH is the school’s club racing teams. The motorsports teams — dirt tracks and drag racing — give students a chance to participate as team members at a professional level in actual racing environments. The race teams are treated as varsity sports by UNOH, making team members eligible for athletic scholarships.
Students design and build race cars from the engine up. Rassel is one of the current dirt track drivers. They’re required to put in 16 hours per week, but sometimes students are at the shop for upwards of 50 hours. The dirt track teams compete at the university-owned and operated Limaland Motorsports Park, a ¼-mile dirt track, and other tracks across the country.
Paul Higgins, a professor and head coach of the motorsports teams, has worked in the racing industry for decades.
“He knows more about motors than I know about anything total,” sophomore Chance Holley said. “You ask a question thinking you’re going to get a simple answer from these instructors, and instead you learn things you didn’t even know you didn’t know. The instructors are a great resource.”
The Over-the-Wall Club is dedicated to students who have an interest in working on a pit crew, and the ARCA Race Club is a one-year internship for about 30 lucky students who work on an ARCA racing team during the course of a season.
“To be able to take students who have no knowledge of the racing industry to the high performance world, to train them to become individuals who are marketable in a career path that they choose, we have all the tools at hand to help them do that,” Higgins said. “The growth the university’s had in the last 15 years has been phenomenal. President Jarvis and the board of directors have a great vision on seeing the university move forward. We’re a one-of-a-kind training instruction. There is no competitor that could hold par to what we have here.”
Some have tried, even discreetly, sending representatives to the Lima campus to poke around, according to Jarvis. Others are more upfront with UNOH, asking curriculum questions and touring the campus. TheBestSchools.Org rates UNOH as the No. 1 auto mechanic school in the nation, ahead of Montana State University Northern, Ferris State, Weber State, Idaho State, Northern Michigan, Southern Illinois, Alaska-Anchorage, and Indiana State, among others.
“We have a lot of competition,” Becker said, “but no direct competitors.”
Household name in racing
While the general public might be unfamiliar with the University of Northwestern Ohio, the school is a household name in the racing and automotive industries, populating the workforce with thousands of employees.
“There’s a reason we’re so involved with racing organizations,” Jarvis said. “Because our graduates do such a good job. They will hire UNOH graduates. On a NASCAR weekend, where Truck, Xfinity, and Cup are racing, we’ll have over 100 graduates working on those teams at the track with hundreds more back at the shops. The ones that don’t get a job don’t want a job.”
The path is similar to Ohio State sending players to the NFL. When a university has cache and a reputation of producing quality players (or workers), the highest levels of that industry will want a particular school’s graduates.
UNOH has signage at NASCAR tracks around the country. But the UNOH Fan Zone at Daytona International Speedway is a marketing bonanza. The university, the official education partner of Daytona, estimates it gets $2.4 million in exposure, with UNOH logos clearly visible throughout the track and on TV. Forty-five students attend Speedweeks, putting on demonstrations, networking with race teams and companies, and talking to prospective students.
“You can’t go to Speedweeks without seeing UNOH everywhere,” Jarvis said. “I could go on and on with success stories. We’ll give you an education so you can go on your chosen career path.”
If you doubt UNOH’s appeal and pull, sit down with Jarvis and Becker for a couple minutes. Becker had multiple Canadians in his graduating class and a student from Stockholm, who discovered UNOH on the internet. He booked a flight to the United States the next day and enrolled the ensuing fall.
Becker estimates he travels full-time eight months of the year, visiting every corner of the country and race tracks from New Hampshire to California to unearth the next crop of UNOH students. He’s quick to tell parents that he knows it sounds too good to be true, but if they would just visit campus, reality would creep in.
Holley is an example of someone who was familiar with UNOH, but couldn’t believe it when he took a blind tour on his own. The 28-year-old Nelsonville, Ohio, native is a non-traditional student, choosing to work in construction after graduating high school because it paid good money. But it wasn’t enjoyable and a shoulder injury pushed him to look for something else.
Now he’s set to graduate in fall 2021, with the goal of working in sales for a performance parts company.
“I’d been aware of UNOH for a long time,” Holley said. “I finally looked around the racing industry and all the money that gets spent in it. Someone is making money off of all of that, and I figured it might as well be me.
“I was shocked [when I visited]. I hadn’t talked to an admissions rep or anything. When you take a tour, for a gearhead, every corner you turn is like heaven. The moment I took the tour, I knew I was enrolling.”
Robotics and green initiatives are the next growth segment in the automotive industry, Jarvis said. One way or another, UNOH will be at the forefront.
“We’ve got good people,” he said. “You know why we’re successful? It’s because of the people. Any business is only as successful as the people that work at it. We’re blessed to have many great employees who care and want to see us succeed and, more importantly, want to see our graduates succeed.”
First Published June 7, 2019, 11:30 a.m.
