Kayleigh Doyle
Reporter
Cole Argoudelis is a rising sophomore at Parkland College, currently involved with Parkland’s automotive technology program.
Growing up in Champaign, Argoudelis went to the High School of Saint Thomas More. He says he played on the tennis team all four years and learned valuable lessons of teamwork that help him now in his hands-on shop classes.
Outside of tennis, he fostered a passion for working on cars. Now at Parkland, he continues that path by taking advantage of all the opportunities that Parkland has.
He loves that all of his classes are “anything car-related, like how to work on cars and learn about how they work.”
His passion for cars was met by Parkland’s accessibility, allowing him to put his passion into his education. He talked about all of the cars they have to work on during shop.
“We have the drag car used for the drag strip, we have a Malibu, a Mustang that can be used for autocross or for the drag strip, and we have the Civic for auto cross which is driving on a track that has tight turns,” he said.
One of Argoudelis’ favorite classes from the past year was AFD-298 Motorsport Chassis Analysis.
“We had six hours of class to just go out in the shop and work on the drag car, the Ford Mustang, or the Honda Civic,” he said. “It was a small specialized class that we got to do lots of what we wanted.”
In addition to the cars they already have to work with, he says they are building a fox body mustang and he is excited to possibly work with a GTI that is in storage.
In his free time his love for cars continues. He says he is currently building an engine for his Audi that he has worked countless hours on.
Through Parkland’s program Cole said he has had many opportunities to make friends in his department and their shared interests carry over into car meetups outside of class.
Outside of Parkland, Cole is already applying his knowledge at Napleton as a Volkswagen technician.
He currently does “anything to do with Volkswagen whether that be basic maintenance or something more complicated like water pumps, water valves, or timing changes.”
Argoudelis says his dream job would be “working installing super chargers, a method to add more horsepower to an engine, and tuning them and getting into the basics on learning how to tune them via computer for European cars.”
He is thankful for his first year at Parkland and said “Parkland is a great school to start with what you want to accomplish in life.”
