As a new ocean economy emerges, Santa Monica College, Port of LA’s AltaSea is ready to dive in – Daily Breeze

The future is blue.

As the health of the planet leads to a global economy that depends on our oceans, community colleges see the urgency of sea-powered careers and want to start preparing their students for them.

Santa Monica College has partnered with Port of Los Angeles AltaSea, a nonprofit center dedicated to accelerating academic collaboration and advancing the blue economy through business innovation and job creation, to develop a new workforce development program.

As part of this effort, students have the opportunity to prepare for careers in fields such as energy supply, climate change response, and global food security, while working alongside leading companies and academics in the field.

The idea of ​​the blue economy is relatively new, but it simply means there will be an economy that creates jobs, with the idea that the ocean provides resources like food, fuel and even medicine, according to Terry Tamminen, CEO and President of AltaSea.

“The college partnership shows that young people who take their STEM classes in high school today and then the (future curriculum) at a community college will then have a certificate that will get them into those blue economy jobs — in aquaculture, offshore wave energy and underwater robotics,” Tamminen said in an interview.

The blue economy will create well over 126,000 direct jobs in LA County alone and pay a total of $37.7 billion in wages by 2030, according to projects from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation.

“It’s a staggering number, and we want to position our students for the first opportunities that exist in one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world,” Santa Monica College Superintendent President Kathryn E. Jeffery said in a statement.

Although there are many careers to be developed soon, the first curriculum to be put together at Santa Monica College is aquaculture – farming in the sea.

College professors are putting together an aquaculture certificate program designed to meet the needs of the growing aquaculture industry by offering a range of courses and materials on marine biology, seawater chemistry, living systems design and more.

The students will also receive an internship through AltaSea, which will help them quickly break into the workforce, officials say.

Before they began developing the curriculum, Santa Monica College faculty that could be affected by the blue economy met to see if it was something that would provide paid opportunities for students in their future, and they saw it, said Patricia Ramos, the dean of academic affairs.

The opportunity to develop the curriculum and support faculty for the new certificate program is possible through a multi-year grant from the Builders Initiative and funding for community projects from US Senator Alex Padilla.

“I am proud to have secured funding that will enable students from LA MINT learning experiences to enter the burgeoning blue economy — an important and growing sector of California’s 21st century economy,” Padilla said in an announcement earlier this year. “This program will provide students in underserved communities with a pathway to high-paying jobs that address climate change and our most pressing challenges.”

Among the students attending community colleges like Santa Monica College is a growing Latino population, Ramos said, with concerns about justice.

“That’s environmental justice that we’re building here and[students]want to be a part of the solution if they get a good paying job out of it, fantastic,” Ramos said.

“The underserved communities surrounding the port and AltaSea will be able to take advantage of these opportunities to get into these sustainable jobs,” she said, “where the ocean resources can be harnessed for economic growth to support their livelihoods and jobs.” improve the health of our oceans is pretty powerful.”

The program’s long-term vision, according to a press release, is to create post-secondary certificates and degree programs that span blue economy industries and areas of study. AltaSea believes this, in partnership with the consortium of Los Angeles County community colleges, will scale in-demand programs across the LA area.

Students in communities around the Port of LA could benefit from such a program, Tamminen said.

“We can’t thank our donors and potential donors enough because it’s really a way for us to serve our community,” he said. “It’s underserved with all the different job changes it’s had in recent years, but there’s a workforce there that knows a lot about the blue economy and we want to reap that and get a chance to catalyze a whole new industry in California.”

Santa Monica College’s aquaculture certification program is expected to begin offering undergraduate courses in 2023.