Located in the Health Science Building on the second floor right in between the the nursing floors, are people who are dedicated to learning skills that help make others feel good about themselves.

Students and instructors in the cosmetology program consider it to be an exhilarating experience and say that this helps give them compassion.

Jeanne Johnson, cosmetology instructor, has been teaching in the department for 35 years.

She is one of the six full-time professors, The others include Nina Motruk, Pat Noeinaski, Erlinda Chavez, Brenda White and Felicia Smith.

Johnson said that she loves doing what she does.

She knew that cosmetology was her calling ever since she was a little girl, since her own mom was a hair dresser, as well.

Johnson has worked at a few salons before taking a job at Cerritos.

She says the cosmetology program offers the exact education that students would get at a trade school, except it is cheaper.

A total of $1,500 includes the kit and the books. Students in the cosmetology program also suggest that if you wanted to enroll for the cosmetology program in the summer to apply for financial aid now.

If you are accepted for financial aid it takes up to six months to receive the money.

So when it is time to pay for the class, the kit and the books you will have the money.

The staff gives you a week to have all of your supplies and if you don’t have all the supplies then you will lose out.

A lot of the students love and have the passion for this kind of work, such as Vicky Sluder who is a wife and mother in addition to being a cosmetology student. Sluder formerly worked in the corporate world.

She said that her job was going to being transfered to a different location, so she decided that this was her chance to take up something that she was most passionate about.

She’s now been in the cosmetology program since the spring of 2007. She said that she absolutely loves it and loves the feeling she gets while cutting and coloring a customers hair.

Sluders also enjoys knowing that her daughter is a hair dresser as well, and when Sluder graduates from the program and gets her cosmetology license she knows that she will have the opportunity to own a hair salon with her daughter.

There are also males who enroll into the cosmetology program as well.

One of them is Chrisoffe Sato, cosmetolgy major, who always loved the thought of pursuing cosmetology as a career, since the very first time he held a brush.

He is currently at 100 hours toward the 1600 hours he needs to graduate.

He loves cosmetology and everything about it. He jokingly quoted from the movie “Blades of Glory,” “If you can dream it, you can do it. “

The cosmetology program even has a ROP program for high school seniors who are wanting to take up cosmetology . This program will help introduce to them to what the school has to offer.