Ashland-based United Bicycle Institute (UBI) is now open for registrations at their new Portland campus.
UBI has been remodeling an existing building at N. Williams and Shaver in North Portland since they signed the lease back in May. Today I spoke with UBI owner Ron Sutphin. Ron said that their first class — a two-week course in “Professional Repair and Shop Operation” — will begin on September 28th.
UBI plans to teach several more sessions of this class, as well as two sessions of its “Introduction to Bicycle Maintenance” by the end of 2009. Frame building classes aren’t slated to be offered at the Portland campus until mid-2010.
But before local aspiring shop managers and mechanics get a crack at the new Portland campus, it will open for a group of bike-mounted U.S. Border Patrol agents who will take a special training course. As the only bicycle-related vocational school in the country that has official sanction from the Department of Homeland Security (a requisite post 9/11), Sutphin says he’s getting more interest from the feds. “We’ve had a lot of interest from the Secret Service too.”
You can register for the course and learn more at BikeSchool.com.
Thanks for reading.
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Jonathan,
Can you please explain to me how it is that having a sanction from the Department of Homeland Security is now a “requisite” of bike mechanic schools? That seems just a bit odd, and a little scary.
If I may hop in here with an explanation, it is federal law that all schools in the U.S. must be approved by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (which is part of Homeland Security) to enroll students who aren’t U.S. citizens. UBI has such approval, and therefore we can (and do) have students attend from all over the world.
We aren’t required to have the blessing of Homeland Security just to be a bike mechanics school, but we do have to be approved to enroll foreign students.
Hope that clears things up and maybe sounds a little less scary.
John Baxter
UBI Administrator
must… sell… kidney… to… afford… tuition…
The 3 letter agencies have got to keep tabs on all those Canadians who sneak across the border to attend bike school… ;=)
financial aid…if only.
Oh geez… will the framebuilding classes be offered at the Portland location? I’m already a darn good mechanic (Schwinn School graduate, 5 years retail mechanic, an additional 7 years in the bike biz… nowadays I build wheels to keep my hands busy). Framebuilding is one thing I’d like to add to my capabilities.
I can see how Homeland Security and ICE are involved but how does the Secret Service play in to this?
All my media cracked mind can make of this is all bike version of the Zapruder film.
Please help remove this poison from my mind:)