Rose Kelly
Rose Kelly
RURAL OREGON IS GREEN WITH EXCITEMENT. From the truck drivers transporting blades, to the farmers leasing their land, to the schools preparing a new workforce, the people of Rural Oregon are proud to be the leaders and generators of a new energy frontier.
Rose Kelly, a widow who managed a local bookstore for twenty years, is one of these people. When the bookstore sold, Rose worried about supporting herself and finding a job with benefits at age 50. After learning that 90 percent of the students who attended the Columbia Gorge Community College’s Renewable Energy Technology program received a good paying job with benefits, Rose signed up. A year later, Rose graduated from the program and is maintaining one hundred and sixty, 350 foot tall wind turbines. (And yes, she climbs to the top of them.) Rose, along with thirty other recent hirees, (whose average age is 48), are the pioneers of this new workforce of Rural Oregon’s Green Economy.
With 600 to 800 wind turbine technicians expected to be hired by 2011, The Columbia Gorge Community College has developed an innovative program that prepares former military personnel, loggers, new students, and people of many walks of life for Oregon’s new energy economy.
To learn more about the program, visit the college’s website at http://www.cgcc.cc.or.us/Academics/RenewableEnergyTechnology.cfm.
More information also available on our Partners page, click the link below.
