Director of Philanthropy and Community involvement for Southern California Edison, Tammy Tumbling, granted scholarships to ten colleges, including Cerritos College, with the Green Job Education program to help certify students interested in environmental careers.

“The colleges that Edison International chose were based on several things. One was the colleges that identified programs’ curriculum that was tied back to the field of development for students to apply for green jobs in the future and on the areas where it showed a lot of financial need,” Tumbling said.

Cerritos College isn’t new to Edison services as the school is in the service area where the city of Cerritos has been a commercial customer for Edison.

The Green Job Education program, started by Tumbling, was a fundraiser that began its second year of investing in the scholarship program for California community colleges.

Cerritos College received its second portion of $100,000 of the $1,000,000 that had been raised by Edison International, which accumulated this year with another portion of that amount to $200,000.

The pursuit of moving toward the direction of being environmentally stable by creating jobs that are meant for green energy, motivated Edison to achieve jobs in that growth area.

Tumbling recognized that by having future employment of green technology meant that by investing in the education of college students to prepare them  for those careers would give a head start in their careers to accomplish.

Since Cerritos College has received it’s second installment of $100,000, the Cerritos College foundation has been saving it’s earnings by investing it into the California Community Colleges Endowment in Sacramento.

One of the main requirements for Cerritos College students to be able to apply for the scholarship won’t be available until the campus builds up the curriculum that meets with green technology classes for students to enroll in.

Executive Director Steve Richardson, who has been saving the scholarship money for Cerritos College, is waiting until the campus has started to design a curriculum program that will revolve around the direction of green technology.

“There will be some classes that will address new technologies, but most of our existing classes that will be ‘greened-up’. An example of that is in the Automotive Department.

Our existing classes on Hybrids and electric cars that compress natural gas are already green classes.” Richardson said.

Richardson also mentioned on the hopeful expectations for Cerritos to develop enough classes to enroll in that way the scholarships come available to students by this fall semester.

As Cerritos College is working with the project technology department to build a program that meets with the requirements for the scholarship, Edison will keep on progressing within the interest of college students who are looking forward to a environmental technology career.

“The next step for us is to make sure that they are getting the appropriate training and hopefully it will eventually result in possibly getting jobs within the community that are tied back to the green job training they received while in college.” Tumbling said.