Last fall the Cerritos Community College District’s Advanced Transportation Technology and Energy Center was awarded an additional $1.5 million to recruit additional high schools to participate in the Zero Emissions Vehicle High School Pilot Project funded by the California Energy Commission.
This program is designed to increase career awareness in the clean fuels transportation field for high school students in underserved communities, including regions impacted by poor air quality as well as those serving minority populations.
Each participating high school receives funding to purchase a Switch electric vehicle kit, which comes with curriculum for teachers to use in their classrooms. Teachers also attend a comprehensive train-the-trainer workshop to receive the instruction needed to help their students assemble the vehicle.
At the time of the augmentation, 28 high schools across California had already implemented the program on their campuses, and the project team was excited to reach out to more schools with the invitation. Word of this project had spread throughout the state among auto instructors and CTE coordinators, many of whom reached out to the ATL project team to find out if they could participate.
Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, interested high school teachers worked with their district administrators to get permission, set up budgets and complete the contracting process which will enable them to offer this new curriculum to their students beginning fall 2022. Thanks to the generous augmentation by the CEC, Cerritos was able to fund an additional 24 schools for the coming school year, bringing the total number of participating high schools to 52.
