Colorado Wins Funds to Provide Job Training in Energy Field


    The U.S. Department of Labor has awarded Colorado $2 million to prepare workers for careers in the energy industry, according to an agency announcement earlier in the week.
    The department gave a total of $125 million as part of the federal government’s Community-Based Job Training Grants Initiative, a program that is meant to provide training to students and workers in high-growth industries.

    Pueblo Community College was also awarded $1.9 million to train students for advanced manufacturing occupations.

    The news comes as the Bush administration has proposed terminating certain job training programs, including the federal labor department’s Work Incentive Grant Program, which awarded $1 million to Colorado in 2006.

    Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.