Michigan HVAC Trade School Bob Greyson Very Lousy School - Ferndale , Michigan

Michigan HVAC:

Summary: Michigan HVAC is a non-accredited trade school for HVAC. It promotes the best school around. The tests are made simple Simon easy you are told the answers days before the test and right before the test the answers are again told to you and you discussed them with the class. The instructor treats you like an idiot for not instantly understanding everything he spits out and gets angry and even yells at you for asking questions sometimes (not all the time).

His attitude is one of not caring if you actually can understand and apply the material at all, but just to provide all the data as fast as he can and get onto the next subject. The school time fame is one quarter of other schools. No HVAC contractor I contacted and asked about this school has ever heard of them and never hired anyone out of the school and I contacted at least 10 HVAC contractors in the area of the school. The teacher jokes and degrades the subject by making sex jokes 4 to 6 times a day and even spreads such comments to students which borderlines sexual harassment.

One student commented to me after taking an exam: I got an A, but I would like to learn something. So it was not just me that took on this viewpoint from taking a class at this school. After graduating from the Heating section of the class I requested a certificate and they refused to provide one for me. After leaving the school and leaving a message for a call back to get my certificate, they never returned my call.

Details in full report below.
 
I attended Michigan HVAC Trade School from late August 2011 to late September 2011. I had a very bad experience with this School that I wish to make known for ethics and correction purposes and for public knowledge.
 
Here are my observations some facts and my opinions:

1) The teacher, Budd Umstot while apparently quite knowledgeable and experienced is rude, crude and degrades the subject.
 
Budd tells jokes about sex in the class about 4 to 6 times a day.  Such jokes I find degrading to the subject and the school and can even be construed as sexual harassment.  Examples are: 

a)      When describing a plumbing union that has male and female parts, he physically stroked the female part saying it was soft and likening it to a womans vagina. And on the male part, he said it was hard and pushes through the female part of the union.

b)      When demonstrating a water column gas pressuring measuring device that reads in inches, he had me do a demonstration in front of the class where I blew into the water column device which raised the water level. It designed in such a way there it is difficult to maintain a constant pressure. He commented that I could get up 7 inches, but I could not keep it up referring to getting a p***s hard for sex and keeping it hard.

c)      When talking about the specific heat of certain subjects when calculating how much heat each subject would absorb to heat up a meal i.e. a cooking pan, meat, vegetables, etc. and breaking down all these items in terms of heat removal, a tardy student walked in mid this class discussion and he commented to the student that we were just discussing his meat implying the students p***s. The student, knowing that that instructor jokes about sex a lot, was very embarrassed.

These are just a few of such activities for the record as examples. As above, Budd Umstot made such jokes regularly, normally, 4 to 6 times a day.  

2) When asking a question for understanding of a subject, Budd is often is irritated when asked, rude, disrespectful and uncaring in his responses. 

a)      One time when I asked him a question out in the lab area, he replied abruptly and then walked away immediately before I understood what I was trying to understand. I had to ask him 3 more times before I understood what I was trying to clarify. The second and third time he was upset about it like I was a fool or an idiot for having to ask.

b)      I asked a question in class once and he yelled angrily at me saying the material was covered earlier in the materials. It was like an attack. I got upset in response and referred him to the first class handout sheet on that subject which he was referring to and the answer to my question was not on that sheet (like he said it was) and as it turned out, the sheet the school provided had  incomplete information on that specific topic. 

c)      Another time when I asked a specific question, he answered it so fast, I could not get it and he added 3 new topics to his answer that I had not been trained on yet which was very confusing. He could have just answered the one question at a level I could grasp, but he did not.
  
d)     When asked to stay after class to answer questions, he complained that he did not get paid for it, but that he would do it.

e)      When you got something right in the class, Budd did not acknowledge the rightness or that you got it right. He was silent and ignored it.  When there was an error, he would blow it out of proportion by raising his voice and accenting saying Wrong!!  He would do this so loudly most often that the whole class would hear.
 
f)       As a result of this kind of teaching most students did not ask questions very often and were backed off from asking them. In my opinion, this is not a situation where learning can take place however, the attitude that the only question you dont ask is the dumb question is the correct attitude.
 
3) In my opinion and another students opinion, the tests are made so easy that real learning for application is not taking place.
 
a) A few days before each test, the answers to the tests are given to the students. Then immediately prior to the test, each test question is discussed in the class. While there is nothing wrong with providing true data and drilling in that     information or committing it to memory, Budds procedures made it easy to get an A. One student commented to me
Well, I got an A, but so what, I want to learn something! I felt the same way.

4) The materials provided have no index. The glossary is not at the end of each booklet, but mixed in with the chapters thus, making it very difficult and time consuming to find references for clarification.
 
5) The instructor is more concerned with spitting out data then student understanding.
 
a)      Once in class Mr. Umstot gave information is such a way that no one in the class understood the subject. He had hand out sheets that went along with subject.  Once he was done with his presentation, he walked out of the class leaving the students alone as it was break time. It was obvious no one understood what he was talking about when he left. The students then proceeded to talk with each other to try and work it out but could not really get it. This happened in class several times. This time, Mr. Umstot took the class back to review material and move forward so that the class could get a grasp of what he was trying to teach. Other times, he did nothing and let students alone to work it out for themselves. 

b)      Often when presenting data, Mr. Umstot gives diagrams on the board with a lot of detail and before students have a chance to write it all down or digest it, etc. he orders them into the lab for something else.  
 
c)      When other students and myself asked him to slow down a bit, he would for a short time and then go back to his habits of giving out info too fast for students to grasp it. I asked him again on this point and he just referred me to the amount of material we had to cover in such a time or the class would not finish on schedule.

6) I finished the Heating Portion of the Class with a high percentage passing average getting As often. I was not issued a certificate. I asked for one, and one was not provided.
 
7) The Heating and AC Instructor Budd Umstot is crass and rude. He always gnores when a student gets something correct and says nothing. When a student gets something incorrect, he raises his voice and says Wrong! so the whole class can hear it as a teaching method.
 
8) Once early in the morning when students were talking waiting for the class to start, rather than take roll call or call attention to the students verbally,  Budd Umstot to get the students attention, took a rubberized baseball bat and pounded it on the table about 4 times with an emotional tone of hate and/or anger. This was not the usual, but each student was like whoa, jeez.. very unprofessional to say the least.
 
Such an environment is not a place where real learning and application can take place.
 
I called up about a dozen HVAC Contractors and none have ever even heard of the Michigan HVAC and thus, no contractor I found was hiring the graduates out of the school. However, another local school I did find a contractor who graduated from that school and was hiring out of that school.

I am not the fastest student but I study for conceptual understanding and application. I have a 138 IQ. I am no dummy. And I have passed several state licenses tests on other subjects.  I found this school atrocious. The first week, I went to the owner and complained that Mr. Umstot was telling sex jokes and going too fast in the class. Nothing was done to correct this.
 
I quit the class and when I told the owner I was quitting, he did not take any action to find out why, he just let me quit with no real interest or concern. He wife who partakes in the administration of the school even complained about me.  I phoned back and left a message to have them call me so my certificate could be sent to me and they never returned my call.
 
 Michigan HVAC is not an accredited school and unless things have changed, they dont plan to be. The owner, Mr. Bob Grayson, has evidently been trying to sell the school for years and has not been able to. The school had only 7 students during the day class. They started up a night class when I was there. At the time I was attending, they did not even know if the school would still be open in January 2012.