NM Lt. Governor Diane Denish and SFCC President Sheila Ortego (r-l) announce plans for creation of a Sustainable Technologies Center
SFCC Provides Sustainability Education and Training
Lou Schreiber
Santa Fe Community College continues down the green path to an ever more sustainable campus with an ongoing commitment to provide sustainability education and environmental training to the community.
In September 2007, the SF community overwhelmingly passed a bond issue that provided the college with $25 million in funding for construction of a new Health Science building and a Trades and Advanced Technology Center. SFCC has created the Sustainable Technology Center (STC) as the focal point for all environmental and sustainability programs and activities. The STC will participate in the planning of the new building, develop new curriculum and training programs, and collaborate with industry.
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In June 2008, SFCC held the Workforce Training for the Green Economy Forum. This exciting event brought together industry leaders from renewable energy, smart-grid, green building and environmental technologies to directly inform SFCC’s expansion and enhancement of curriculum to yield customized training that the STC will tailor to meet industry’s fast-emerging workforce needs.
A select group of industry leaders participated in the forum, which began with a keynote address by Ed Mazria, founder and leader of the 2030 Challenge. Ed presented an overview of 2030’s most recent research and planning initiative, The 2030 Blueprint1, launched on Earth Day 2008. It reveals that a national investment of $21.6 billion toward building energy efficiency, would replace 22.3 conventional coal-fired plants, reduce CO2 emissions by 86.7 MMT, save 204 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 10.7 million barrels of oil, save consumers $8.46 billion in energy bills and create 216,000 new jobs.
The forum’s program consisted of a series of presentations by specialists in energy generation, smart-grid, green building, manufacturing and biofuels production, followed by in-depth, facilitated “break-out” sessions where participants identified their workforce training, technology and development requirements. Workforce Training for the Green Economy will not only help SFCC’s Sustainable Technologies Center establish its next generation of training in-step with industry’s actual needs, but the forum begins an ongoing peer relationship between business and industry in these sectors with SFCC to ensure the institution remains responsive to continually evolving workforce needs.
The STC will provide emerging green businesses a place to develop and deploy new technologies, while offering students opportunities to train and work on these cutting edge technologies as they prepare for careers in the green economy.
On a program level, our Certificate and Associate of Applied Science degrees in Environmental Technologies continue to attract students. Two new Certificates are being offered, one in Green Building and another in Solar Energy. In 2008, two successful HERS Energy Rater training programs took place with over 20 people in each. Students from the Center for Community Sustainability Certificate Program, working with journeymen electricians in a 2-day marathon installation, installed a 3.5 KW Photovoltaic Solar Energy system at Santa Fe Prep School. The grid-tied installation now allows SF Prep to put electrical energy back into the grid to offset its consumption.
**www.architecture2030.org
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