GM's youth design program helps recruit fresh blood

• GM's Young Modelers and Designers middle and high school program turned 20 this year.
• Accepted students learn the first steps to vehicle development under GM Design professionals.
• GM tracking a worrying trend: decline in design college enrollment

General Motors’ investment in metro Detroit has a tendency to yield great returns — particularly when it comes to finding and attracting talent to the automotive industry. While pursuing an engineering career at a Detroit automaker may be obvious for Michigan students, finding burgeoning artists who see carmaking as a career path isn’t nearly as clear. 

Melinda Gray, GM Design’s outreach and development manager, points to Young Modelers and Designers — a 20-year-old program — as a key method of attracting artistically minded students to the industry.

“Most of what we do is centered around creating larger awareness, not just for our targeted audience, but also for their parents and educators,” she said. “Sometimes that proves to be a barrier — not realizing the full breadth of opportunities that exist for creatives at General Motors, but that it’s lucrative as well.”

The youth design program concluded its 20th 11-week automotive design and sculpting course last month for seventh- to 12th-grade students. Even after two decades, the program is more important than ever when it comes to encouraging young creators to consider a career in automotive design rather than fine arts, film or video game development. 

Those accepted get the chance to learn the first steps to vehicle development under GM Design professionals. This includes honing their sketching skills, as well as digital and clay sculpting and the application of automotive color, material and finish. 

Young Modelers and Designers had 18 virtual students this year as well as 30 in person, but four students joined the program through the company’s smaller sister studio in Pasadena, California, close to one of the art schools from which GM often recruits, according to Gray. 

Facing a decline in design-college enrollment

The program is among many Global Design Center offers that support recruitment to the industry. Another new development to the program this year included a partnership with the Northville Concours, a youth-run organization with the goal of supporting future competitive automotive judges. Three students in the GM design program were selected to participate in a poster design challenge as a part of that collaboration. The winning design will be unveiled at the Northville Concours Founder’s Day Dinner on May 3, which GM also sponsors.

Gray, who has worked at GM for nearly 30 years, noted that her current directives fall under four pillars: pre-collegiate outreach, college level, internal development for early hires and community outreach.  

“We’re seeing a decline in college enrollment overall, but particularly in our design colleges. There’s just a handful here in the U.S.,” she said, adding that those schools include the Art Center in Pasadena, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and the Pratt Institute in New York. “We’re really sensitive about protecting that pipeline and we recognize that starts way before you’re in high school.”

The 11-week program starts accepting applications in October each year and begins in December. Students present finished projects to GM leadership at the Warren design dome.

The 20th anniversary marks several changes in the programming, as the coronavirus pandemic forced the program into the digital space. Today, it’s hybrid, offering online mentoring for aspiring automotive designers and on-site tutelage at GM’s Design studio in Warren. 

The only thing that differs between virtual and in-person classes is the physical sculpting component, Gray said, “Beyond that, they have the same exposure to digital sculpting, creative design and sketching so they can work on their own time and in class.”

Specific investments include programming with Girl Scouts and a $300,000 investment in a Design Industry Club for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan. GM's Outreach and Development programming leveraged 249 mentors and volunteers to aid 8,961 students in 2024, the company said.

Hometown talent

Financial access to art supplies is critical, and GM recognized this concern during the most recent iteration of the program by developing “YMAD kits” that included paper, pencils, circle guides, sketchbooks and vellum — a slightly opaque sketching material that’s more expensive than regular paper. 

“We wanted to level the playing field and ensure that all the students who were starting didn’t have to worry about those things in terms of being successful — that they would have everything they needed to connect with the program appropriately,” Gray said.  

The program inspired creative designer Lexie Treinen, who participated in the Young Modelers and Designers twice as a student and four times as a mentor. 

Treinen, 27, who works in the Cadillac interior studio, recalls visiting the company for the first time when she was in middle school with her father during a take your kid to work day.

Growing up in Armada, a town near Romeo, Treinen said most of her peers pursued trade schools or agricultural degrees. Few art programs had the outreach that allowed her to get involved. 

“My whole family has worked for General Motors. My dad worked for GM, my mom worked there for a short period of time, which is where they met,” she said. “He would bring me and my siblings in every year, and it’s where I first discovered what automotive design really was.”

A GM designer discovered Treinen at a drawing station sketching a car and told her it wasn’t half bad. He told her to apply for the program. That application, which included figure drawing, photography and vehicle sketches, was rejected.

“It was upsetting, but at the same time, I was like, 'If I really want to do this, I really need to try hard,' ” she said. “I had to really think about how to take a sketch to 3D and recognize that this is what I wanted to do. Cars were the main part of my life. It was the perfect career to combine those two things.”

In 2014, the program accepted Treinen. One of her mentors, Clay Davis, helped her craft the portfolio needed to get into the College for Creative Studies — one of GM’s main feeders for transportation design professionals. According to CCS, more than 200 of its students participated in GM-sponsored projects in the past 14 years. 

More than 200 of its former students work in GM’s Design team alone, a CCS spokesperson also said, and each fall, the Detroit automaker conducts a presentation and portfolio review. Last year, GM designers met with 44 CCS students for portfolio reviews. 

As a mentor, Treinen said she’s motivated by the increase in awareness of the program over the years and was even able to mentor a student from her hometown.

“When I was in it, everyone wanted to be a designer or into sculpting. But now with social media and Instagram, everyone is exploring filmmaking, photography, visualization of animation — and these are things that they can now explore in this program that they never had the opportunity before,” she said. “We’ve come such a long way from when I was in Armada that the program is so recognized.”

Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com.