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Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Helps
Build a Bridge to Success WITH
$20,000 DONATION TO cUESTA COLLEGE
Cuesta
College’s Bridge to Success Program has just received much-needed help
from a long-time Cuesta supporter. Pacific Gas and Electric Company
(PG&E) is marking the utility’s Centennial Celebration and Diablo Canyon
Power Plant’s 20th anniversary with a grant of $20,000 to the Bridge to
Success program, which realizes individual potential by preparing
at-risk youth for college and future employment. The check was presented
recently to Cuesta College Superintendent/President Marie E. Rosenwasser
with California Community College Chancellor Mark Drummond in
attendance.
“Get a job, keep the job and work
towards a better job through further education” is the message of Bridge
to Success, a program that strives for an 80% plus success rate. In
awarding the grant to Cuesta College, Tom Jones, PG&E’s Manager of
Government and Public Relations, noted, “As a major San Luis Obispo
employer, PG&E cares about the local workforce and the availability of a
qualified labor pool. We know that different students learn in different
ways, and we are pleased to celebrate our two milestone anniversaries by
supporting this unique program that enables underserved youth to become
productive, contributing members of the Central Coast’s labor force.”
Cuesta
College’s Bridge to Success is a two-tiered program designed to reach
at-risk youth who are not being successful in traditional academic
environments. Usually referred by counseling staff, group home
administrators, county social workers and probation officers, these high
school sophomores, juniors and seniors are at a critical point in their
lives.
Tier one of
the program is an Introduction to Workplace Readiness, a 54-hour class
taught on high school campuses that emphasizes job readiness skills and
strategies for succeeding both at school and at work. Bridge students
earn both high school and college credits, while being introduced to
higher education, specifically to the academic and vocational paths
available at Cuesta. Students completing the introduction can apply to
the second tier program that focuses on long-term academic and workplace
success. The six-week summer Bridge program at Cuesta College couples
course-work with paid work experience in campus offices.
According
to Mimi Naish, Cuesta College’s Workforce Development Projects
supervisor, “The PG&E funding will be used to further the employability
and placement of Bridge graduates. During 2004/05, the program served
more than 325 students from throughout San Luis Obispo County. We at
Cuesta College are deeply grateful for PG&E’s partnership in this
effort. This funding will make an enormous difference in the lives of
literally hundreds of at-risk students enrolled in the program.”
Matt Aydelott, the Bridge to
Success program coordinator, profiles one of the many participants who
have found the “bridge to success.” Meet a young woman who is far behind
her peers in completing high school units and is asked to leave her
school for disciplinary reasons. She enters the Bridge program via
Introduction to Workplace Readiness at a South County community school.
Earning an “A” and building on the success, she appeals to her high
school to allow her to return and graduate. She is also accepted into
the summer Bridge Program at Cuesta where she not only meets with
academic success, but also performs so well in her on-campus job, the
department hires her to continue after the summer program ends. Fast
forward to meet the same young woman, now with totally different
aspirations and prospects — looking forward to college graduation, a
first for her family. Currently a full time student at Cuesta and
continuing to work at the same job she was placed in as a Bridge
student, she plans to transfer to Cal Poly after earning her A.A.
degree.
Aydelott
sums up the program that is about cost-effective prevention, “It is a
lot less expensive to provide these sorts of preventative programs now
than it is to spend money later. Cuesta’s Bridge to Success program is
being recognized as a model for possible statewide implementation.”
Jones acknowledges that Cuesta
College is bridging adversity with positive possibilities. “Everyone at
PG&E is proud of the association — proud to be investing in our
community and its future. We are celebrating two decades of service at
Diablo Canyon and a century of service as the area’s electrical utility
by funding model programs of educational significance, community
importance and personal value.”
Cuesta College is the third
recipient of the anniversary grants, joining Leadership SLO and the SLO
County Office of Education P-16 program as honorees. Two additional
programs will be named grant recipients before year-end, totaling an
additional $100,000.
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