Oct 19 2010
United States of America is trying to accelerate its growth in renewable energy sources. The government has introduced various credit programs to increase the growth of its green economy. To achieve such a growth and to meet the growing number of green installations the country demands millions of trained and skilled professionals to perform the job requirements of energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainability and green building technologies.
Sensing the growing need for such a work force the community colleges in America have formed the Sustainability Education and Economy Development (SEED) a joint effort of American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and ecoAmerica. The effort received financing from Flora Family Foundation, Surdna Foundation and the Kresge Foundation. The joint effort will facilitate around 1,200 colleges from all over the country to provide courses on sustainable clean tech energy and train the workforce to perform jobs in the green economy market. The initiative received overwhelming response from the colleges to offer such courses and more than 300 community colleges have signed the initiative agreements even without knowing the outcome of its future development. The SEED program was launched on 11th October at an assembly of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education in Denver. The online initiative of SEED is www.theSEEDcenter.org a free online centre to share its resources on eco-friendly environs with the community colleges and to benefit the students enrolling for the courses is also launched.
The SEED Center offers an extensive range of free resources on various clean energy topics. The study program offered by SEED include clean energy resources, information on industry and available employment, various types of easy to follow case studies with the required information and other sustainable programs on execution, staff development and financing. The course subjects for the program such as wind, solar energy, green building, and energy efficiency are prepared by a group of Technical Advisory members from government, academic, clean tech industries and authorities. The online program of SEED offers a congenial sharing environment with provisions for chat boards and a wiki.
Source: http://www.theseedcenter.org/